Twitter on Friday confirmed suspending more than 70 million accounts in May and June, or an average of more than 1 million each day, amid efforts to curb suspicious and malicious activity, The Washington Post reported.
An analysis conducted by The Post and confirmed by Twitter found that the social network has more than doubled the rate at which it suspends accounts since October 2017, the newspaper reported.
Twitter told congressional investigators that same month that Russian operatives had exploited its platform during the 2016 U.S. presidential race, and subsequent efforts to limit abuse have contributed to the surge in suspensions, the report said.
The tens of millions of accounts suspended since October includes users believed to be automated, malicious “bots,” as well as suspected, abusive social media trolls, according to the report.
“One of the biggest shifts is in how we think about balancing free expression versus the potential for free expression to chill someone else’s speech,” said Del Harvey, Twitter’s vice president for trust and safety. “Free expression doesn’t really mean much if people don’t feel safe,” she told the newspaper.
One of Twitter’s most popular users, meanwhile, cited the Twitter purge in a tweet Saturday suggesting both The Post and The New York Times should be suspended as well.
“Twitter is getting rid of fake accounts at a record pace,” President Trump wrote to his more than 50 million Twitter followers. “Will that include the Failing New York Times and propaganda machine for Amazon, the Washington Post, who constantly quote anonymous sources that, in my opinion, don’t exist - They will both be out of business in 7 years!”
Underscoring the prevalence of bots on the platform, an analysis conducted last year concluded that more than a quarter of Mr. Trump’s Twitter followers are likely fake, The Daily Dot has previously reported.
Twitter boasted 336 billion active users at the end of the first quarter of 2018, and the company previously estimated that fewer than 5 percent of its users – or about 16.8 million — are fake or involved in spam, The Post report said.
Russia interfered in the 2016 race through a multi-pronged campaign that included amplifying disinformation on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms, federal investigators previously concluded. Twitter told lawmakers in October that the Internet Research Agency, a Russian “troll farm” implicated in Moscow’s alleged election meddling, operated 2,752 troll accounts and over 36,000 bots deployed during the election. Facebook, on its part, said that same month that 126 million of its users may have seen content created by the same group.
“I wish Twitter had been more proactive sooner,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I’m glad that — after months of focus on this issue — Twitter appears to be cracking down on the use of bots and other fake accounts, though there is still much work to do,” he told The Post.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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