Twitter has announced that it will permanently delete more than 3,400 accounts running spam campaigns associated with governments in six countries.
Three years ago, Twitter released the first comprehensive public archive of data related to state manipulation of information. We’ve improved it over time, explained our principles, and iterated our approach: since its initial release in October 2018, we’ve shared 37 datasets of attribution platform manipulation campaigns originating from 17 countries, spanning more than 200 million tweets and 9 terabytes of media .
These accounts were used in eight different countries: Mexico, People’s Republic of China, Russia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Venezuela.
Both fake and real accounts were used
According to Twitter, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had the highest number of fake accounts among the six countries using it for propaganda campaigns.
More than 2,000 accounts were used to deliver the Chinese Communist Party’s views on the treatment of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
In addition, Twitter found 112 accounts linked to a private company called Changyu Culture, which is endorsed by the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region authorities.
The Ugandan government used some 400 fake profiles to support the current president and his political party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM).
The activity in support of the Venezuelan government’s topics and statements was done through a network of 277 accounts promoting other accounts and hashtags.
These campaigns were run through an app called “Twitter Patria” which gives access to accounts and timelines, and this app and similar apps have been shut down.
According to Twitter, 276 of the fake accounts shared “primarily civic content” in support of the Mexican government’s work on public health and political parties.
The network of 268 accounts was used for activities by the Tanzanian government aimed at unfairly reporting against members and supporters of the investigative journalism publication Fichua Tanzania and its founder.
Twitter has found only 66 accounts, both fake and real, related to Russian operations targeting individuals in the Central African Republic and Libya.
The aim seems to be to promote pro-Russian positions and to support Russia’s geopolitical positions in Libya and Syria.
Twitter says it has shared details of these campaigns and associated accounts with three major research institutes: the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), Cazadores de Fake News, and the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO). We have also shared details of the campaign and related accounts with three major research institutes: the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), Cazadores de Fake News, and the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO).
Twitter Inc. has now deleted 3,465 accounts. The company has not disclosed the number of tweets or media details generated and shared during the exposed state-linked campaign.
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