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Twitter Safety
@TwitterSafety
, 3 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
We're disclosing coordinated account activity focused on the ongoing protest movement in Hong Kong. Our investigations have found that these accounts are linked to state-backed information operations from mainland China.

blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/c…
The accounts were proactively identified by our team & suspended for using coordinated attempts to manipulate the public conversation. We're adding the relevant information to our archive of information operations — the largest of its kind in the industry.
These covert, manipulative behaviors have no place on our service — they violate the fundamental principles on which Twitter was built. We hope that we can empower further learning and public understanding of these nefarious behaviors that undermine the public conversation.
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More from @TwitterSafety see all

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Twitter Safety
@TwitterSafety
Rules should be easy to understand. We heard you, ours weren’t. We updated, reordered, and shortened them, so you can know what’s not allowed on Twitter. Click through this thread for all our rules, and read our blog to learn more.

blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/c…
Twitter's purpose is to serve the public conversation. Violence, harassment and other similar types of behavior discourage people from expressing themselves, and ultimately diminishes the value of global public conversation.
Our rules are to ensure all people can participate in the public conversation freely and safely.
Read 19 tweets
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Twitter Safety
@TwitterSafety
Today, we permanently suspended @realalexjones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope. We took this action based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations. help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-p…
As we continue to increase transparency around our rules and enforcement actions, we wanted to be open about this action given the broad interest in this case. We do not typically comment on enforcement actions we take against individual accounts, for their privacy.
We will continue to evaluate reports we receive regarding other accounts potentially associated with @realalexjones or @infowars and will take action if content that violates our rules is reported or if other accounts are utilized in an attempt to circumvent their ban.
Read 3 tweets
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Twitter Safety
@TwitterSafety
Working with our industry peers today, we have suspended 284 accounts from Twitter for engaging in coordinated manipulation. Based on our existing analysis, it appears many of these accounts originated from Iran.
As with prior investigations, we are committed to engaging with other companies and relevant law enforcement entities. Our goal is to assist investigations into these activities and where possible, we will provide the public with transparency and context on our efforts.
Since our initial suspensions last Tuesday, we have continued our investigation, further building our understanding of these networks. In addition, we suspended an additional 486 accounts for violating the policies outlined last week. This brings the total suspended to 770.
Read 5 tweets

Related threads

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Elise Thomas
@elisethoma5
My @ASPI_ICPC colleagues @tomatospy @JakeWallis_ASPI and I have spent the last week digging into the data released by Twitter in connection to a state-backed information operation targeting the Hong Kong protests. Here's what we found: THREAD
As initially suspected, the campaign targeting #HongKongProtesters appears to have been hastily assembled with a mix of a small number of purpose-made accounts and a much larger network of repurposed marketing and spam accounts.
In this account, for example, we can clearly see a change of behaviour from 2018 its initial purpose, which seems to have been mostly spamming in English, to a much lower volume of tweets directed at the #HKprotests in 2019.
Read 16 tweets
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zeynep tufekci
@zeynep
Hello Hong Kong! (Landed straight into the airport protest!🤷‍♀️)
Parent-children protest in Hong Kong, snaked off into a march later. #Hongkongprotests
A group of protesters leaving Tai Po where thousands had gathered, many of whom later reassembled at Tai Wai. High energy for a protest cycle entering its 10th week. #HongKongProtests
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Yoel Roth
@yoyoel
Earlier this month, we removed more than 2,800 inauthentic accounts originating in Iran. These are the accounts that FireEye, a private security firm, reported on today. We were not provided with this report or its findings.
As we conduct investigations into the wider networks and actors involved in information operations, we typically avoid making any declarative public statements until we can be sure that we have reached the end of our analyses.
These accounts employed a range of false personas to target conversations about political and social issues in Iran and globally. Some engaged directly through public replies with politicians, journalists, and others.
Read 6 tweets
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Enough is Enough ~ Me for President
@M_JClayton
THREAD on Canadian election interference

1.
 This whole thread is a direct quote taken from my CBC morning brief email about election interference in Canada. All Canadians please read, RT and be aware. Let's not repeat what happened next door.
2.
 Tweets by trolls from Russia, Iran and Venezuela attempted to sow division among Canadians over issues such as pipelines, immigration and refugees.
3.
 CBC/Radio-Canada analyzed 9.6 million tweets that Twitter believes resulted from potentially state-backed information operations. Roughly 21,600 of them directly targeted Canadians. All have since been deleted.
Read 11 tweets
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Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
@rasmus_kleis
"Action Plan against Disinformation" from @EU_Commission out. Thanks to @Ansip_EU @VeraJourova @JKingEU @GabrielMariya & @FedericaMog for basing response on freedom of expression, emphasizing collaboration,and insisting on monitoring platforms. Beyond that, bit disappointing 1/12
Plan identifies disinformation as a “major challenge for European democracies and societies”, calls for “urgent and immediate action” and “strong commitments” in response, especially in light of @europarl coming up in May and 50+ other elections in Member States by 2020. 2/12
What is that strong commitment? First of all, €3.1m more to EEAS “strategic communication budget”, which includes (controversial) @EUvsDisinfo but also more broadly "communication on Union values and policies", e.g. promotion. 3/12
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Anabelle ❀
@DemocracyJourno
Twitter suspended 1,500 fake accounts this weekend that a pro-Trump group created to mock liberals because the accounts had been spreading false information about Election Day, like saying that Election Day is November 7, when it is on Tuesday, November 6. axios.com/report-twitter…
Twitter releases archived Russian Troll tweets 🇷🇺
thebea.st/2CQ81ne
Twitter Publishes 9 Million Russian Troll Tweets 🇷🇺 blog.twitter.com/official/en_us…
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