In an exclusive to the Washington Post on Friday, it is estimated that social media mega giant Twitter recently suspended more than 70 million accounts during the months of May and June 2018. The cleansing occurred into the month of July and is expected to remain at a steady clip in coming months.
Cited as “fake and suspicious” accounts, those targeted for removal were classified in Twitter’s expanding campaign against bots and trolls that could have direct impact in the upcoming 2018 election.
The rate of account suspensions over the summer has more than doubled since October 2017. It was during this timeframe when the influential platform was placed under congressional pressure to reveal how Russian bots were able to harness the social media site to influence the hotly contested 2016 election between political party front runners Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald J. Trump.
The investigation showed that, among other findings, the handle @Ten_GOP shared links to erroneous and factually inaccurate news sources and websites that were later retweeted and re-shared by celebrities and global influencers. Among them: Nicki Minaj, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Ann Coulter, and Chris Hayes.
@Ten_GOP was created in November 2015.
“They were trying to influence influencers,” Jonathan Albright, research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, told the Washington Post. “They’re creating buzz. It’s a buzz machine.”
Although Twitter is publicly attempting to fix its internal validity structure, one has to wonder: is it too late?
“I wish Twitter had been more proactive sooner,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), the top 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.”
According to a blog post dated June 26, 2018, Twitter says they have identified and challenged “more than 9.9 million potentially spammy or automated accounts per week.That’s up from 6.4 million in December 2017, and 3.2 million in September.” The statement was based on data from May 2018.
The same blog post also relayed that “in Q1 2018, we suspended more than 142,000 applications in violation of our rules – collectively responsible for more than 130 million low-quality, spammy Tweets. We’ve maintained this pace of proactive action, removing an average of more than 49,000 malicious applications per month in April and May.”
Twitter has been in operation since 2006.