Took down 70 million accounts in May and June as part of its campaign against fake news and misinformation, according to a report in The Washington Post
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Twitter is learnt to have suspended more than 70 million fake accounts in the months of May and June, taking down more than 1 million accounts in a single day at times, as it fights to clear the microblogging platform of bots and trolls and check dissemination of misinformation and fake news by suspicious accounts.
According to data obtained by The Washington Post, Twitter has continued with the pace of suspending fake accounts in July too.
The crackdown comes amid mounting political pressure as Twitter was criticised by US Congress last year on Russia using fake accounts to interfere in the presidential election. Twitter has confirmed that the rate of account suspensions has since doubled, claims the WP report.
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Last month, Twitter announced “new measures to fight abuse and trolls, new policies on hateful conduct and violent extremism”.
READ | Twitter goes after trolls and spams, users may see drop in follower count
“Due to technology and process improvements during the past year, we are now removing 214 per cent more accounts for violating our spam policies on a year-on-year basis,” Twitter had said in a blog post by Yoel Roth, Platform Policy, and Del Harvey, VP, Trust and Safety.
Stating that Twitter is now focusing on improving the health of conversations, the post had said it would ensuring “people have access to credible, relevant, and high-quality information on Twitter”.
The campaign, however, comes with a risk to Twitter’s user growth as a decline in the number of new users could be expected in the second quarter, the Post report said, adding that Twitter did not comment on a possible decline in its user base.
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