Twitter World
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Twitter recently deleted about 20,000 fake accounts linked to the governments of Honduras, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Egypt, and Serbia, claiming these governments violated Twitter's policy and the accounts were a "targeted attempt to damage public conversation."

The head of site integrity, Yoel Roth said, the deletion of the accounts was a part of the firm's ongoing initiative to trace and investigate state-supported information operations. Among the accounts deleted on Thursday, over 8,500 were reportedly linked to Aleksandar Vučić, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) president.

The said accounts had posted over 43 million tweets intensifying positive news coverage of the government of Vučić, not to mention attacking his opponents in the politics.

Moreover, the leading social media firm also deleted a network of over 5,300 accounts associated with the Saudi monarchy which operates outside Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt.

Together, the three posted 36.5 million times, complimenting the leadership of Saudi or criticizing the activity of both Turkish and Qatar in Yemen. The said accounts' takedown followed a tip that came from the Stanford Internet Observatory saying that, the network had also produced tweets that backed Khalifa Haftar, a Libyan warlord.

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Discrediting Peace Talks

In a blogpost, the observatory said, noticeable narratives comprised of "discrediting recent peace talks in Libya." They also criticized the government of Syria, the influence of Iran in Iraq, praising the Mauritanian government, and criticizing the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Meanwhile, a separate link of more than 2,500 accounts associated with the El Fagr newspaper, a known pro-government publishing firm, was also deleted. According to Twitter, these fake accounts had been utilized for the amplifying of messages that are critical of Turkey, Iran, and Qatar.

Additionally, Twitter also deleted over 3,000 accounts which it said, had been detected to an employee working for Juan Orlando Hernández, the president of Honduras. The observatory said much of the behavior of the tweet seemed targeted at covering up the negative news about the highest leader of Honduras by promoting his initiatives, not to mention strongly re-tweeting him and the news organizations that are favoring his administration.

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Other Fake Accounts Deleted

A follow-up on Bellingcat investigative journalists' report, Twitter said it had also deleted around 795 fake accounts that promoted the government of Indonesia and targeting the said it had removed 795 fake accounts promoting the Indonesian government and aiming the West Papuan liberation movement.

Last month, Twitter collaborated with Facebook in an initiative to disable a Moscow-connected operation targeted at fueling racial tensions in the United States, as the two social media giants sought to address the pressure to stop the attempted Russian meddling in the presidential elections this year. 

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According to a statement Twitter released, transparency is essential to the work that the company does and such behaviors are violating their policies, not to mention, are an aimed attempt to destroy or damage the public conversation.

According to Niam Yaraghi, from the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation, the deletion of the 20,000 accounts would have considerably symbolic essentiality, opposing that it was quite simple and effortless for "well-sourced" actors of the state to replace them.