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Twitter has removed another 3,465 state-backed accounts as part of efforts to limit the influence of information manipulation campaigns on the web.
The social media platform explained in a blog post that the account sets that have been removed include eight “distinct operations” that can be attributed to China, Mexico, Russia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Venezuela.
“Every account and piece of content associated with these operations has been permanently removed from the service,” Twitter said.
Listing out the operations, the majority of accounts removed in this round of purges were linked to China, with over 2,000 of them amplifying Chinese Communist Party narratives related to the treatment of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang.
Another network of around 100 accounts were connected to “Changyu Culture”, a private company backed by the Xinjiang regional government.
Rounding out the top three governments that had their linked accounts removed was the Ugandan government, which had 418 of its linked accounts that used inauthentic activity to support having the Ugandan presidential incumbent Museveni removed, while 277 Venezuelan accounts amplifying accounts and content that supported the presiding government were removed.
In addition to banning these accounts and the content shared by them, Twitter has shared relevant data from this disclosure with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Cazadores de Fake News, and the Stanford Internet Observatory.
The disclosure comes during a week where Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey resigned from the company’s CEO post. Twitter on Wednesday also announced the expansion of its private information policy to include the sharing of private media, such as photos and videos, without permission from the individuals that are depicted in them.
