Twitter Suspends s Claiming to Be Black Trump ers Over Spam 255t45 Manipulation

The s sometimes claimed to be owned by military veterans or of law enforcement. 4l18i

By Reuters | Updated: 14 October 2020 10:09 IST

Twitter declined to specify the number of s suspended or to comment beyond its statement 4r4n58

Highlights

Twitter policy against platform spam prohibits s coordination
Some s used photos of Black American men that appeared in articles
Some used identical images of Trump as their header image

ment

Twitter on Tuesday said it had suspended a number of s that claimed to be owned by Black ers of President Donald Trump and his re-election campaign, saying the s broke its rules on spam and platform manipulation.

"Our teams are working diligently to investigate this activity and will take action in line with the Twitter Rules if Tweets are found to be in violation," a spokeswoman for the social media company said.

A review by Reuters of some of the suspended s showed they often used images of real people that did not match their names and posted identical language in their messages, including the phrase: "YES IM BLACK AND IM VOTING FOR TRUMP!!!"

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The s sometimes claimed to be owned by military veterans or of law enforcement.

Darren Linvill, a social media disinformation researcher at Clemson University who said he had been tracking the s since Saturday, found more than two dozen s that collectively had 265,000 retweets or Twitter mentions. He said the s ranged in size but some had attracted tens of thousands of followers.

Twitter declined to specify the number of s suspended or to comment beyond its statement.

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Twitter's policy against platform manipulation and spam prohibits coordination among s to artificially influence conversation, including the use of multiple or fake s.

Linvill said some of the s used photos of Black American men that had appeared in news articles. Some used identical images of Trump as their header image.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the investigation, which was first reported by the Washington Post.

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Linvill told Reuters that most of the s were created in 2017, but had become more active in the past two months. He said all the s he had been tracking in the group had now been suspended by Twitter, but the damage had already been done.

"It doesn't matter if Twitter's shutting you down in four days, they've already had their impact," Linvill said.

Twitter declined to answer Reuters' questions about the origin of the s.

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