Text messaging

Twitter has removed almost 9,000 accounts that were "working to promote Serbia's ruling party", the Serbian Progressive Party, it said on Thursday.

"Toward the end of last year, we identified clusters of accounts engaged in inauthentic coordinated activity which led to the removal of 8,558 accounts working to promote Serbia's ruling party and its leader," Twitter announced.

Greece is mulling the introduction of further restrictions to public movement to contain the spread of coronavirus, extending a broad lockdown announced last week after a recent surge in violations, government spokesman Stelios Petsas said Wednesday.

The number of text messages sent by people in Greece who want to leave their houses during the lockdown measures put in place to halt the spread of the new coronavirus ranged between 1.3 and 1.8 million per day from March 23, when the system was introduced, to March 26, authorities said.

The numbers do not include messages that were either in the wrong format or rejected.

Greek Health Minister Vassilis Kikilias on Tuesday announced the closure of all schools and universities to close for 14 days as part of efforts to contain spread of coronavirus. 

The decision relates to all state and public schools, kindergartens and universities, Kikilas said, adding that the measure is preventive and aimed at reducing the spread of the virus. 

Twitter confirmed on Feb. 7 that the official Twitter accounts of social media giant Facebook Inc and its Messenger platform were hacked.

A Twitter spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the accounts were hacked through a third-party platform.

More than 15 million messages were posted on Twitter during the campaign ahead of last week's UK parliamentary elections, an increase of more than 66% from the previous elections in 2017, the BNR quoted the company on Thursday.

One of the most popular social networks in the world, Twitter has announced that it bans political ads, AFP reports.

Company CEO Jack Dorsey said in a tweet: "We've made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons…."

Twitter decided on Oct. 30 to ban political advertising globally, starting Nov. 22, according to the company's CEO Jack Dorsey.

Twitter has apologized to its users for abusing their phone numbers and email addresses.

The internet giant claims that they "inadvertently" used the data for advertising, although they asked for account holders as a security measure.

Twitter's social network collapsed last night, users said. The problems began around 6 pm Bulgarian time and affected a number of countries, including Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, France and Russia.