More than 3,400 Twitter accounts that posted content from spam and manipulation messages in favor of the governments of six countries, including: Venezuela, Mexico and Russia were removed from the platform this Thursday, December 2, reported the authorities of this social network.
“Since that first disclosure in October 2018, we have shared 37 data sets from attributed platform manipulation campaigns originating from 17 countries, spanning more than 200 million tweets and nine terabytes of media. Today, we are disclosing 3,465 additional accounts to our file of information operations linked to the State, the only one of its kind in the industry ”, they explain.
According to the details, they include eight different operations directed from Mexico, China, Russia, Tanzania, Uganda and Venezuela. Consequently “every account and content associated with these operations has been permanently removed from the service.”
Venezuelan application eliminated: “Twitter Patria”
From Venezuela, a network of 277 accounts that amplified profiles was eliminated, hashtags and official narratives in favor of the Government of Nicolás Maduro. Likewise, the “Twitter Patria” application that was used by these people to access their accounts and execute content schedules in favor of Chavismo was suspended.
“We believe we have a responsibility to protect the integrity of the public conversation and provide meaningful transparency about our findings,” they explain.
From Mexico, 276 accounts that shared “civic content in support of government initiatives related to public health and political parties” were eliminated.
As detailed by Twitter, most of the accounts were suspended because they committed infractions in the policies of spam and manipulated the conversation held on the platform.
Russia was running an operation in the Central African Republic
The report describes that in the case of Russia they eliminated a network of 16 accounts that were linked to the Russian Internet Investigations Agency (IRA) that were running an information operation in the Central African Republic.
“The operation relied on a combination of real and inauthentic accounts to introduce a pro-Russia point of view into the political discourse of Central Africa,” they explain.
They also eliminated a network of 50 accounts that attacked the Government of Libya and the actors that support it. They spread support for Russia’s political position on Libya and Syria on the social network.
From China they removed a network of 112 accounts that were connected to “Changyu Culture”, a private company backed by the Xinjiang regional government. And a web of narratives amplifying the Chinese Communist Party’s narratives regarding the treatment of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang was also erased.
African countries
In Tanzania, a network of 268 accounts used to submit bad faith reports on Twitter, targeting members and supporters of FichuaTanzania and its founder, was removed. It also explains that there was a subset of accounts that were in charge of sharing pro-government content with # chaguamagufuli2020.
From Uganda, a network of 418 accounts was suspended that “engaged in coordinated inauthentic activity in support of the incumbent President of Uganda, Museveni, and his party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM).”
Facebook and Twitter had already eliminated accounts in Nicaragua
Last November, the company Meta, which owns Facebook, eliminated a “transgovernmental trolling farm in Nicaragua”, as announced in a monthly report in October, in which it detailed: “We eliminated a network of 937 Facebook accounts, 140 pages, 24 groups and 363 Instagram accounts in Nicaragua ”.
As reported, the “trolley farm” operated targeting “the national public of that country and was linked to the Government of Nicaragua and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) party.
Meanwhile, Twitter reported that it suspended a series of accounts that carried out “inauthentic behavior” of Ortega trolls and the proliferation of false accounts. Among the accounts suspended by Twitter in Nicaragua are @ElCuervoNica, @ TPU19J, @nica_rojaynegra and their other backup account @nica_rojaynegraR, @sapitoFSLN, @elcuervoninja, @ QueenMo1204, @JavierM_Monkey, @taniasandinista, among others.
This was the second time this year that Twitter suspended Ortega accounts in Nicaragua. Last March at least ten accounts were suspended, including: @taniasandinista with 59,026 followers and @ElCuervoNica with 32,283.
Likewise, Google Alphabet, owner of YouTube, canceled 82 YouTube channels and three blogs, which disseminated information related to the Ortega regime, a spokesperson for the technology company told Reuters.
