Twitter has lately removed a number of suspected trolls and fake accounts from its platform, sparking complaints by its most vocal users who said on Wednesday that as a result, they had lost thousands of followers overnight.
They immediately condemned the so-called “#twitterlockout,” the latest one on their list of objections against the ideologically liberal tech industry, Politico writes.
The move came only days after 13 Russians connected with a St. Petersburg-based “troll farm” were indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller, putting additional pressure on social media companies to prevent a plague of fake accounts, similar to that of 2016 which enabled election meddling.
Twitter announced last year that it would clean the platform of “spammy behavior.”
“As part of our ongoing work in safety, we identify suspicious account behaviors that indicate automated activity or violations of our policies around having multiple accounts, or abuse,” a Twitter spokesperson said.
Among those complaining is James O’Keefe who tried last November to get The Washington Post to publish a story of a woman falsely accusing Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual assault. O’Keefe’s group Project Veritas is also responsible for publishing a video allegedly showing Twitter employees admitting to silencing conservative voices.
“Looks like thousands of Twitter users committed the thought crime of tweeting about ‘God,’ ‘the American flag,’ and ‘guns,’ and were taken off the platform,” O’Keefe tweeted Wednesday.
A former Secret Service agent, Dan Bongino, tweeted a similar complaint.
“@Twitter is discriminating against conservative voices & banned me, & many others, from posting ads while wiping out 1000s of followers.”
Michael Flynn Jr., the son of former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn, also questioned the social media company’s motives, saying that Twitter has been “caught too many times censoring conservative accounts.”
The spokesperson said their motives were not politically biased, but rather aimed only at making “Twitter safer and healthier for everyone.”
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