Exclusive: Twitter deletes over 10,000 accounts that
sought to discourage U.S. voting
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[November 03, 2018]
By Christopher Bing
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Twitter Inc <TWTR.N>
deleted more than 10,000 automated accounts posting messages that
discouraged people from voting in Tuesday's U.S. election and wrongly
appeared to be from Democrats, after the party flagged the misleading
tweets to the social media company.
"We took action on relevant accounts and activity on Twitter," a Twitter
spokesman said in an email. The removals took place in late September
and early October.
Twitter removed more than 10,000 accounts, according to three sources
familiar with the Democrats' effort. The number is modest, considering
that Twitter has previously deleted millions of accounts it determined
were responsible for spreading misinformation in the 2016 U.S.
presidential election.
Yet the removals represent an early win for a fledgling effort by the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, a party group that
supports Democrats running for the U.S. House of Representatives.
The DCCC launched the effort this year in response to the party's
inability to respond to millions of accounts on Twitter and other social
media platforms that spread negative and false information about
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other party
candidates in 2016, three people familiar with the operation told
Reuters.

While the prevalence of misinformation campaigns have so far been modest
in the run-up to the Congressional elections on Nov. 6, Democrats are
hoping the flagging operation will help them react quickly if there is a
flurry of such messages in the coming days.
The Tweets included ones that discouraged Democratic men from voting,
saying that would drown out the voice of women, according to two of the
sources familiar with the flagging operation.
The DCCC developed its own system for identifying and reporting
malicious automated accounts on social media, according to the three
party sources.
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A man reads tweets on his phone in front of a displayed Twitter logo
in Bordeaux, southwestern France, March 10, 2016. REUTERS/Regis
Duvignau/Illustration/File Photo

The system was built in part from publicly available tools known as "Hoaxley"
and "Botometer" developed by University of Indiana computer researchers. They
allow a user to identify automated accounts, also known as bots, and analyze how
they spread information on specific topics.
"We made Hoaxley and Botometer free for anyone to use because people deserve to
know what’s a bot and what’s not," said Filippo Menczer, professor of
informatics and computer science at the University of Indiana.
The Democratic National Committee works with a group of contractors and
partners to rapidly identify misinformation campaigns.
They include RoBhat Labs, a firm whose website says it has developed technology
capable of detecting bots and identifying political-bias in messages.
The collaboration with RoBhat has already led to the discovery of malicious
accounts and posts, which were referred to social media companies and other
campaign officials, DNC Chief Technology Officer Raffi Krikorian said in email.
Krikorian did not say whether the flagged posts were ultimately removed by
Twitter.
"We provide the DNC with reports about what we’re seeing in terms of bot
activity and where it’s being amplified," said Ash Bhat, co-founder of RoBhat
Labs.
"We can’t tell you who’s behind these different operations, Twitter hides that
from us, but with the technology you known when and how it’s happening," Bhat
said.
(Reporting by Chris Bing in Washington; Editing by Jim Finkle, Dan Grebler and
Diane Craft)
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