Facebook has suspended numerous accounts behind US-based pages, citing inauthentic behavior (portrayal)
SAN FRANCISCO:
Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc on Tuesday suspended several newly created and mostly right-wing press accounts posting information about voting in the hotly contested US election for violating their policies.
Twitter said the accounts were suspended for violating its anti-“coordination” policy by posting identical content while appearing independent or engaging in other covertly automated behavior.
One of those suspended, SVNewsAlerts, had more than 78,000 Twitter followers, after adding more than 10,000 last week.
The story frequently warned of election-related unrest and highlighted issues of security and reliability of votes. He highlighted allegations of fraud against Democrats and drew attention to rallies and speeches by Republican President Donald Trump.
In fact, little or no major disruption was reported on polling sites on Tuesday, with civil liberties groups and law enforcement on high alert for interference with voters.
Other accounts suspended by Twitter include FJNewsReporter, Crisis_Intel and Faytuks. Some accounts from the past suggested that readers follow others.
Facebook also suspended several accounts behind US-based pages called SV News and FJ News, citing inauthentic behavior. The SV page had over 20,000 subscribers.
Some of the suspended accounts were read attentively by media in Russia, accused of interfering with the 2016 election. SVNewsAlerts and Faytuks, who had only 11,000 subscribers, had their tweets highlighted dozens of times in Sputnik and RT state-controlled, as observed by researcher Chris Scott and confirmed by Reuters.
Even when social media companies took action, false or exaggerated reports of voter fraud and delay at the ballot box circulated throughout the day, aided in some cases by official Republican accounts and online posts.
The FBI and the New York attorney general also said they were investigating a series of mysterious robocalls urging people to stay home, which has been reported in several battlefield states.
Twitter added fact-check tags to several tweets from the @PhillyGOP account, which was among those using the hashtag #StopTheSteal. The Philadelphia Republican Party did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Twitter tags.
Far-right websites Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit both published articles claiming “theft is on” in Pennsylvania, which have racked up thousands of shares on Facebook and Twitter.
#StopTheSteal went from a few dozen mentions to more than 2,000 mentions in a 15-minute period in the morning, according to media intelligence firm Zignal Labs.
Zignal said unsubstantiated allegations of closed polling stations and excessively long queues in Republican-prone areas of Pennsylvania, one of the most contested states, received more than 33,000 mentions on Twitter.
Alex Stamos, former chief technology officer of Facebook and now director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, told reporters there have been coordinated efforts to deliberately eliminate some issues.
“Specifically in Pennsylvania – to say that this example is a demonstration of something nefarious happening, and not just the kind of random error that happens all the time,” he said on an organized call. by Election Integrity Partnership.
In a video widely shared by a conservative audience, including by Trump’s two sons, a Trump poll observer was seen being denied a site. The video has been viewed 2.5 million times on Twitter.
Philadelphia officials investigated and concluded the man was mistakenly banned under an expired law, which required permission to enter a specific polling station. He was then admitted.
Followers of the QAnon conspiracy movement also disseminated the reports from Pennsylvania, according to researchers at disinformation tracking firm Alethea Group.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
