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| Twitter blocks fake accounts claiming to be black Trump supporters |
Twitter has blocked a number of fake accounts claiming to be black supporters of President Donald Trump and his candidates.
The social networking site announced, on Tuesday, that the accounts were violating guidelines for spam and tampering with the platform. The Washington Post was the first to report on Twitter's actions.
Several fake accounts posted the same fake language, including the phrase "Yes, I'm black, I'm voting for Trump!"
Darren Linville, an associate professor at Clemson University who studies disinformation on social media, discussed the story with reporters at The Washington Post. He wrote on Twitter that these trolls were "trying to influence our conversation before November."
The account in question appears to have stolen photos of real people in their profile pictures, including: veterans and law enforcement officers.
The fake account contained 265,000 Retweets or mentions. Some of these accounts collected more than 10,000 subscribers.
"Most of the accounts were created in 2017 and have increased their activity in the past two months," Linville told Reuters.
A Twitter spokesperson told CNBC, "Our team is working hard to investigate this activity. If the Tweets are found to violate Twitter's rules, we will act according to the rules." Twitter. We have currently taken action on certain Tweets and accounts due to violations of our spam and platform manipulation policies. "
Twitter has yet to determine how many accounts have been suspended or delayed.
Twitter wrote on its website that it does not allow users to "exaggerate information, artificially suppress it, or manipulate or disrupt people's experience on Twitter."
Twitter also suffers from a network security deficit, according to a report released on Wednesday. In July of last year, this resulted in a "small" hack attributed to a Florida teenager in which the young man had captured the characters of many of the world's most famous celebrities.
The report, issued by the New York Treasury Department, also recommended that large social media companies such as some banks receive special treatment after the 2008 financial crisis, and that special regulators be put in place to monitor their ability to resist cyber attacks and interfere in elections.