Twitter removed thousands of accounts that were trying to discourage people from voting

The fake news has proliferated on social media during the 2016 election season. Today, Democratic leaders are on the offensive to fight deceptive positions that could harm the party in the upcoming elections. The news of one of the party's latest efforts was announced Friday: Twitter has removed more than 10,000 accounts posting messages aimed at discouraging mid-term voting, according to Reuters.

The accounts would have been bots pretending to be Democrats asking people not to vote. Sources told Reuters that some of their messages argued that liberal men should refrain from voting to downplay their own voices and boost women's voices.

"We removed a series of accounts for attempting to share disinformation in an automated way – a violation of our policies," a Twitter spokesperson told CNN Business. "We stopped this quickly and at the source."

A group within the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has identified positions using anti-bot tools like Botometer and Hoaxley with help from companies such as RoBhat Labs, according to Reuters. The committee used the tools needed to take proactive action against automated and malicious publications in the pre-mid-term period. The DCCC has notified Twitter of these publications in particular earlier this year. The accounts were erased at the end of September and the beginning of October.

"For this year's elections, we have established open and easy-to-use lines of communication and escalation routes for state election officials, DHS and the campaign organizations of the two main parties. ", told Twitter to CNN Business.

The platform has become much more aggressive about cracking down on false accounts since the 2016 elections. The Washington PostTwitter has suspended more than 70 million accounts in May and June only this year. L & # 39; Independent reported at the moment suspensions could have affected 6 percent of all Twitter accounts.

Although this crackdown was caused in part by false information from Russian robots in the 2016 elections, this new group of malicious accounts seems to have been different. Twitter told CNN Business that the more than 10,000 accounts deleted this fall were probably operating from the United States.

"Whether it's about Russia or a bot network in Michigan, it's the same to fight it," said David Yanakovich, head of digital operations for the campaign's Doug Jones in the Senate. The Washington Post of the democrats' struggle against online misinformation.

RoBhat Labs told Reuters that it was informing Democratic leaders of the trends observed in the activity of robots. "We can not tell you who is behind these different operations, Twitter is hiding it, but with the technology you know, when and how it happens," said company co-founder Ash Bhat.

With so much at stake in Tuesday's mid-session, the efforts of the DCCC are undoubtedly important. Reuters reported that there appears to have been fewer automated misinformation tweets in 2018 than in 2016, but that Democrats remain on the alert. If there is a sudden increase a few days before the elections, they hope that this signaling system will help them to react effectively.

"We congratulate Twitter for taking this step to help voters get accurate and timely information on how to make their voices heard on election day," CNN Business Manager Raffi Krikorian told CNN. Democratic National Committee.