Twitter removes accounts of Russian government-backed actors

Image: Ravi Sharma

Twitter has removed dozens of accounts connected to Russian government-backed actors disseminating disinformation and targeting the European Union, the United States, and the NATO alliance.

These accounts were part of two separate networks with Russian links, each of them specialized in targeting different entities.

"Our first investigation found and removed a network of 69 fake accounts that can be reliably tied to Russian state actors," Twitter said.

"A number of these accounts amplified narratives that were aligned with the Russian government, while another subset of the network focused on undermining faith in the NATO alliance and its stability."

The second Russian-linked disinformation network, comprising almost three dozen accounts, was focused on amplifying narratives striving to specifically undermine other users' faith in the US and the EU.

"As part of our second investigation in this region, we removed 31 accounts from two networks that show signs of being affiliated with the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and Russian government-linked actors," Twitter added.

"These accounts amplified narratives that had been previously associated with the IRA and other Russian influence efforts targeting the United States and European Union."

Today we’re adding new data to our archive of information operations.

State-affiliated networks from Russia, Armenia, and a previously disclosed network from Iran have all been removed from the service.https://t.co/bJDfBWpxcx

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) February 23, 2021

Four disinformation networks removed

In all, Twitter said that it removed four networks of accounts the company linked to state-affiliated disinformation operations attributed to Russia (100 accounts), Armenia (35 accounts), and Iran (130 accounts).

373 associated accounts across these four networks were permanently suspended for breaking the platform's manipulation policies.

"Since we launched our first archive in October 2018, we have disclosed data related to more than 85,000 accounts associated with platform manipulation campaigns originating from 20 countries, to our information operations archive," the company added.

Last year, in June, Twitter permanently removed 32,242 accounts linked to three distinct operations attributed to Russia, the People's Republic of China (PRC), and Turkey.