The accounts were linked to the governments of China, Russia and Turkey, and engaged in systematic operations against pro-democracy activists, political opponents and dissidents.
Social media platform Twitter has suspended 32,242 state-linked misinformation accounts from China, Russia and Turkey, and published their details to a public archive of misinformation resources that it runs alongside the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO).
The accounts were all suspended for violating the service’s platform manipulation policies, and in making a full public disclosure, Twitter said it hoped to “serve the public conversation, remove bad actors and… advance public understanding of these critical topics”.
Most of the removed accounts – 23,750 – plus a further 150,000 “amplifier” accounts that boosted their content, were linked to the Chinese state, said Twitter, which first identified suspicious activity from the network in August 2019.
The core accounts were largely caught early and never achieved much traction, with low follower counts and engagement, while the amplifier accounts were designed to artificially boost impression metrics on the service by engaging with the core network through likes, replies and retweets.
