Twitter Purges ‘Fake’ Accounts Glorifying Turkish Leader

Twitter said it had removed 7,340 "fake and compromised" accounts on Friday, which were linked to the youth branch of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, AKP.

"The collection of fake and compromised accounts was being used to amplify political narratives favourable to the AKP, and demonstrated strong support for President Erdogan. We're disclosing 7,340 accounts to the archive today," Twitter wrote.

On Friday Twitter disclosed more than 32,000 accounts in all, mostly from China - 23,750 accounts, Turkey and Russia because they were suspected of being "state-linked information operations".

We're disclosing new state-linked information operations to our public archive — the only one of its kind in the industry. Originating from the People's Republic of China (PRC), Russia, and Turkey, all associated accounts and content have been removed. https://t.co/obRqr96iYm

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) June 11, 2020

Twitter said it had worked with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute ASPI and Stanford Internet Observatory SIO and had shared relevant data with them.

"Collaborative research provides us with a way to learn from past operations and mitigate future malign efforts," SIO wrote on Twitter's latest decision.

According to media reports, Erdogan ruling party and its youth branch run tens of thousands of essentially fake accounts, promoting the President. These accounts are often nicknamed the "Ak Trolls".

Twitter also said that the accounts had hacked other accounts that were more critical of President Erdogan. They were also used for commercial activities, such as cryptocurrency-related spam.

Twitter's policy on manipulation and spam prohibits ...