Twitter Removes Nearly 4,800 Accounts Linked To Iran

Twitter removed nearly 4,800 accounts linked to Iran as part of its ongoing efforts to stop the spread of misinformation, the social media platform’s Head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth said in press release on Thursday

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik – ) Twitter removed nearly 4,800 accounts linked to Iran as part of its ongoing efforts to stop the spread of misinformation, the social media platform’s Head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth said in press release on Thursday.

“In October 2018, we published the first comprehensive archive of Tweets and media associated with known state-backed information operations on Twitter… Today, we’re adding six additional datasets to our archive, covering coordinated, state-backed activities originating from four jurisdictions. All accounts have been removed from Twitter,” Roth said in the release.

Twitter said it removed 4,779 accounts across three subsets that originated in Iran, 130 fake accounts in Spain, 33 accounts in Venezuela and four accounts with activity connected to the Russian internet Research Agency.

“We believe that people and organizations with the advantages of institutional power and which consciously abuse our service are not advancing healthy discourse but are actively working to undermine it,” Roth said.

Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have been consistently pressured by the US government to crackdown on foreign actors carrying out influence campaigns. Both companies have shutdown numerous accounts and pages, but have been routinely criticized by organizations for censoring user.