Twitter has today announced that it has shut down nearly 3,500 accounts worldwide that were posting pro-government propaganda in six countries, including Tanzania, Uganda, China, and Russia. 418 of the removed accounts were owned by the National Resistance Movement (NRM) party.
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In Tanzania, the social media firm removed a network of 268 accounts and according to its blog post “utilized to file bad faith reports on Twitter, targeting members and supporters of FichuaTanzania and its founder.” A subset of accounts in Tanzania also Tweeted pro-government content primarily associated with #chaguamagufuli2020.
In Uganda, Twitter says they removed a network of 418 accounts engaged in coordinated inauthentic activity in support of Ugandan presidential incumbent Museveni and his party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM). Uganda recently blocked its citizens from accessing Facebook (now Meta) when over 20 ruling party– NRM-based Facebook Pages were switched off. The government reacted by banning the social media giants, so Ugandans have to rely on VPN connections just to access the platform. Depending on which Twitter profiles have been blocked, the government will most likely react in a similar fashion.
In its blog, Twitter said that “In most instances, accounts were suspended for various violations of our platform manipulation and spam policies,”
Like other social media giants, Twitter has faced criticism over failures to tackle misinformation on its platform as well as racist, sexist, and homophobic posts, among other forms of hate speech.
It also announced Thursday that it will launch a Twitter Moderation Research Consortium early next year, bringing together “experts from across academia, civil society, NGOs and journalism” to study possible improvements.
Twitter said it would not seek to influence the consortium’s findings.
