,
16 tweets,
19 min read
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1/ This is big news. Twitter have finally suspended the Twitter account of Saud al Qahtani @saudq1978 , and 267 accounts originating in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt primarily targeting Qatar. They also suspended six Saudi Accounts linked to Saudi-state run media
@saudq1978 2/ I say finally because Saud Al Qahtani has long been accused of manipulating Twitter, and putting people's lives in danger using Twitter. I wrote a little about how he did that here > ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc… and here marcowenjones.wordpress.com/2017/08/23/sau…
3/ The 267 accounts may be bigger players, but bear in mind thousands of accounts are routinely suspended for disseminating propaganda without any public announcement. #Qatar #Saudi #Bahrain blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/c…
4/ The other accounts suspended from Saudi include @KSAToday @TheGlobus @arabiadaily @theintlreview . Nothing to exciting there, that I can see
@KSATODAY @TheGlobus @arabiadaily @theintlreview 5/ One of the UAE accounts suspended was
@SaraBiitar
- she allegedly had a masters degree in political and economic science :) The last screenshotted tweet from 2018 shows her promoting an anti-Qatar hashtag. "Qatar supports Iranian Terrorism"
@SaraBiitar
- she allegedly had a masters degree in political and economic science :) The last screenshotted tweet from 2018 shows her promoting an anti-Qatar hashtag. "Qatar supports Iranian Terrorism"
@KSATODAY @TheGlobus @arabiadaily @theintlreview @SaraBiitar 6/ The Twitter Press release mentions that they also suspended 4,258 accounts operating 'uniquely' from the UAE tweeting propaganda against Qatar and the Houthi movement. It doesn't mention that both batches were suspended in March/April 2019
@KSATODAY @TheGlobus @arabiadaily @theintlreview @SaraBiitar 7/ Between them, the 4,258 accounts (I actually counted around 3.5k, not 4.2k) produced around 1,050,000 tweets between July 2011 and May 2019. That's a lot of clams...The most common hashtag was "اليمن" (Yemen)
@KSATODAY @TheGlobus @arabiadaily @theintlreview @SaraBiitar 8/ The words Muslim Brotherhood in both English and Arabic are mentioned approximately 5, 631 times (in a negative context), Mohammad bin Salman's name appears in around 4,500 tweets. One of the most popular hashtags was "Mohammad bin Salman's visit brightens up the Emirates"
@KSATODAY @TheGlobus @arabiadaily @theintlreview @SaraBiitar 9/ The word "qatar" in both En and Ar appears around 65,833 times. "Yemen" appears around 84,700 times. Iran appears around 15,411 times. Emirates appears around 35,100 times. Houthi(s) appears around 53,000 times....
@KSATODAY @TheGlobus @arabiadaily @theintlreview @SaraBiitar 10/ Around 1,200 of the tweets and retweets were mostly negative coverage of the World Cup in Qatar. The tweets were in various languages, the majority Arabic (652,000), then English (174,000), then Spanish (33,000)
@KSATODAY @TheGlobus @arabiadaily @theintlreview @SaraBiitar 11/ What cracks me up, and what I've seen in a lot of my analysis is that the word 'love' is so common. It is the eighth most common term used in the biographies of the 4200 or so suspended accounts.
@KSATODAY @TheGlobus @arabiadaily @theintlreview @SaraBiitar 12/ Indeed, this is why 'love' triggers me...
@KSATODAY @TheGlobus @arabiadaily @theintlreview @SaraBiitar 13/ The most popular/retweeted tweet in the sample was this one, which was about the Saudi King opening the Majlis aShura and denouncing the Iranian-led coup in Yemen
@KSATODAY @TheGlobus @arabiadaily @theintlreview @SaraBiitar 14/ The most followed account in the whole batch is this Technology service company SMTFY... smtfy.com/en/index.html
@KSATODAY @TheGlobus @arabiadaily @theintlreview @SaraBiitar 15/ Of course the big question is why have Twitter not provided the archive of @saudq1978 tweets in their published tranche? They acknowledge they do not provide them. As al-Qahtani was banned from the US, could it be that his tweets are evidence in a criminal investigation?
@KSATODAY @TheGlobus @arabiadaily @theintlreview @SaraBiitar @saudq1978 16/ For evidence supporting veracity of al Qahtani's nefarious shenanigans, read this > by @al_b33lz3bub al_b33lz3bub
