Twitter deletes more than 10,000 automated accounts

Twitter removed more than 10,000 automated accounts displaying messages discouraging voters from voting in Tuesday's US election and mistakenly appearing to come from Democrats, after the party reported misleading tweets to the social media company.

"We acted against accounts and relevant activities on Twitter," said a spokesman for Twitter in an email. Withdrawals took place in late September and early October.

Twitter has removed more than 10,000 accounts, according to three sources close to the efforts of Democrats. The number is modest, given that Twitter has already removed millions of accounts that he said were responsible for spreading misinformation during the 2016 US presidential election.

Yet The referrals represent a quick victory from a nascent effort by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, a group that supports Democrats who run for office in the United States.

This year, the DCCC launched this effort in response to the party's inability to respond to millions of accounts on Twitter and other social media platforms that broadcast negative and false news . information on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other party candidates in 2016, three people familiar with the operation were informed to Reuters.

While the prevalence of misinformation campaigns has so far been modest in the run-up to the 6 November congressional elections. The Democrats hope the operation will help them react quickly if there is a flurry of wiping in the coming days.

Tweets include those who discouraged Democratic men from voting, saying it would drown out women's voices, according to two sources close to the signaling operation.

The DCCC has developed its own system for identifying and reporting malicious automated accounts on social networks, according to party sources.

The system was built in part from tools known to the public known as "Hoaxley" and "Botometer" developed by computer scientists from the University of Indiana . They allow a user to identify automated accounts, also called bots, and badyze how they disseminate information on specific topics.

"We have made Hoaxley and Botometer free because they deserve to know what is a bot and what is not," said Filippo Menczer, professor of computer science and technology. Computer Science at the University of Indiana.

The Democratic National Committee works with a group of subcontractors and partners to quickly identify misinformation campaigns.

These include RoBhat Labs, a company whose website claims to have developed a technology that can detect robots and identify political parties in messages.

Collaboration with RoBhat has already uncovered accounts and malicious messages, which have been referred to social media companies and other campaign leaders, DNC Chief Technology Officer Raffi Krikorian has declared in an email.

Krikorian did not specify whether the reported publications were ultimately deleted by Twitter.
"We provide e DNC with reports on what we see in terms of bot activity and amplification," said Ash Bhat, co-founder of RoBhat Labs.

"We can not tell you who is behind these different operations, Twitter is hiding it, but with technology, you know when and how it's going," said Bhat.

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