Twitter suspends fake accounts claiming to be black Trump supporters

Twitter has suspended several accounts posing as black supporters of Donald Trump ahead of the 3 November presidential election.

The social media platform hasn’t specified how many accounts were taken down, but the company told the Washington Post that the accounts in question violated their rules of spam and platform manipulation.

According to the Post, Clemson University social media researcher Darren Linvill tracked and found more than two dozen similar accounts that collectively had 265,000 retweets or Twitter mentions. Many of these accounts had gained quick popularity online and posted identical content, including phrases like ‘YES I AM BLACK AND IM VOTING FOR TRUMP’ and the #BlacksForTrump hashtag.

It was also found that a few of them had thousands of followers and used profile photos of black people who have appeared in news stories, as well as identical images of Donald Trump in their headers.  

Linvill told Reuters most of these accounts were created in 2017, but they have become more active now with the presidential election drawing closer. The researcher said he “cannot determine the origins of the accounts at this point”, but that the evidence pointed towards foreign origins of the accounts.

Linvill suggested Twitter’s actions came too late. "It doesn’t matter if Twitter’s shutting you down in four days," he said, "they’ve already had their impact.”

Twitter spokesperson Trenton Kennedy said Twitter took down some of the network identified by Linvill.

"Our teams are working diligently to investigate this activity and will take action in line with the Twitter Rules if tweets are found to be in violation.”

Twitter, like other social media platforms, has rules against spamming and manipulation techniques that can have an impact on public perception. The move becomes all the more relevant because the US elections are just three weeks away.

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