SAN FRANCISCO – Twitter officials report that they have deleted close to 4,800 suspicious accounts linked to Iran. The company says these accounts were secretly pushing the Iranian government’s agenda.
Twitter indicated that it has added those accounts and their tweets to a now public database it launched last year, which tracks its battle against government-linked misinformation. The company has also added a handful of deleted accounts linked to Russia, Venezuela and the Catalonia region of Spain.
Twitter launched the database in October of 2018. The public can download the documents, which have some information redacted. However, any one doing research may request access to get the unredacted data sets.
Twitter informed reporters from the Associated Press that the removals are meant to thwart any election interference while upholding valid political speech. The company confirmed that it had previously removed about 2,800 of the Iranian accounts that were using fake profiles.
