Twitter has suspended another 486 accounts as it continues its fight against fake news and foreign interference in the national conversation. This follows 284 suspensions on August 21.
The social media giant says its internal investigation found these accounts to be violating policies that last week were described as “engaging in coordinated manipulation.” Many of the first wave of accounts that were suspended were from Iraq. Twitter did not give a country of origin for the late Monday suspensions.
All totaled, 770 accounts have been suspended. Less than 100 of those, says Twitter, claimed to be located in the U.S. and many were “sharing divisive social commentary.” Most of the accounts were less than a year old, and had a total of 1,268 followers.
Twitter’s actions come after the major social media companies met last week for a summit last week to discuss how they can protect their platforms from hackers in the upcoming midterm elections. Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft and more discussed how social media companies can avoid hackers once again using those platforms as tools to influence national elections.
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Twitter’s investigation is ongoing and could result in additional suspensions, despite some criticisms from the White House. The figure 770 is a notable number, but it’s ultimately a drop in the bucket for the company. In its last fiscal quarter, Twitter had 335 million monthly active users, a number that has been dwindling for some time, in part because of the company’s efforts to combat fake accounts.
