One of the most common means of spreading disinformation and political propaganda is social media. Twitter recently identified such incidents on its platform, which appeared to originate from Russia and Iran. The social networking platform revealed that it immediately proceeded to delete the fake accounts.
It appears that most of the fake accounts originate from Iran. Twitter has identified and removed 4,779 accountsthat are suspected of being linked to or fully supported by the Iranian government.
These accounts used fake names, spread false information, and instigated political discussions that were in favor of Iranian interests.
The fake accounts tweeted news content around two million times, which is considered a means of manipulating the platform's users and is contrary to Twitter's terms of use.
About 300 of these accounts were deleted for trying to influence the world on issues concerning Israel, while 2,865 accounts were deleted for spreading fake news on both political and social issues.
However, Twitter also identified four accounts that appear to originate from Russia, specifically from the Russian Internet Research Institute (IRA), a Moscow-based entity involved in promoting the Kremlin's political agenda.
A few months ago, Twitter had identified over nine million tweets related to political issues and originating from thousands of IRA accounts.
Twitter has also discovered other fake accounts promoting political interests originating from other countries. It recently removed 130 accounts originating from Spain and 33 from Venezuela.
Of course, Twitter is not the only social networking platform facing such incidents.
In May, Facebook was forced to delete thousands of Russian pages, accounts, and groups that were being used in political campaigns to influence the world about military activity in Ukraine.
