Twitter has removed over 200,000 handles for spreading pro-China and Russia messages while also boosting support for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The company said “a core network” of 23,750 highly active Chinese accounts had been removed, along with another 150,000 “amplifier accounts”.
Amplifier accounts share content to increase engagement that increases word-of-mouth exposure.
Twitter said the Chinese network had links to an earlier state-backed operation dismantled last year by Twitter, Facebook and Google’s YouTube, which had been pushing misleading narratives about political dynamics in Hong Kong.
Twitter said 23,750 accounts were the main focus while other accounts were identified as helping to boost the messages.
Twitter also revealed it has shut down more than a thousand Russian-based misinformation accounts.
In an official statement on fake Turkish Twitter accounts, they said that “those accounts were fake profiles designed to support the president and were single-handedly managed by a central authority”.
However, Erdogan’s Communications Director Fahrettin Altun denied the allegations through his official Twitter handle while stating that it was an “attempt to smear the Turkish government and a popular political movement, which was unacceptable”.
In general, the entire network was involved in a range of manipulative and coordinated activities. They were tweeting predominantly in Chinese, Russian and Turkish languages and spreading geopolitical narratives for political agendas.
Last week, Twitter also accused United States (US) President Donald Trump of making false claims in some of his posts, although the platform has come under fire for not removing coronavirus misinformation.
Earlier this week, the company said it was trialing a new “read before you retweet” pop-up aimed to promote “informed discussions”.
A message will appear on articles that users share without actually following the link to the article.
