Security News > 2022 > August > Twitter, Meta kill hundreds of pro-Western troll accounts

Well known for an abundance of anti-western troll accounts and propaganda, Twitter and Meta are reporting that they've taken down nearly 200 accounts that, for the past five years, have been amplifying pro-Western messages in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika, a social media analytics company, have published a report based on data from Meta and Twitter, in which they describe their findings as "The most extensive case of covert pro-Western on social media to be reviewed and analyzed by open-source researchers to date."

Lest you think it's just Russian trolls trying to destabilize the West, the researchers found "An interconnected web of accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and five other social media platforms that used deceptive tactics to promote pro-Western narratives."

Neither company has made any allegations as to what entity may have sent the tweets; Twitter has only said it believes the tweets came from the US and Great Britain, while Meta said activity it flagged originated in the US. Included in the data were 170 Twitter accounts with over 300,000 collective tweets that Twitter said it removed due to "Platform manipulation and spam," as well as 39 Facebook profiles, 16 pages, two groups and 26 Instagram accounts Meta took down for engaging in "Coordinated inauthentic behavior."

Researchers did note some low-level, open-source connections between overt and covert activity on Twitter and Meta, but the technical data was limited, making it difficult to establish.

The Register has asked Meta and Twitter for more details.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/08/25/twitter_meta_troll_accounts/