Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc have suspended several recently created and mostly right-leaning news accounts.
This was disclosed by the duo social media giants on Tuesday, according to Reuters.
The accounts were suspended for posting information about voting in the hotly contested U.S. election for violating their policies.
Twitter explained the accounts had been suspended for violating its policy against “coordination” by posting identical content while appearing independent or engaging in other covertly automated behavior.
It stated, “One of those suspended, SVNewsAlerts, had more than 78,000 Twitter followers, after adding more than 10,000 in the past week.
“The account frequently warned of election-related unrest and highlighted issues with voting safety and reliability. It pointed to fraud claims about Democrats and called attention to Republican President Donald Trump’s rallies and speeches.”
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Other accounts suspended by Twitter included FJNewsReporter, Crisis_Intel and Faytuks. Some of the accounts in the past suggested that readers follow others.
Facebook also suspended several accounts behind U.S-based pages called SV News and FJ News, citing inauthentic behavior. The SV page had more than 20,000 followers.
Some of the suspended accounts were closely read by the media in Russia, which has been accused of meddling in the 2016 election.
Both SVNewsAlerts and Faytuks, which had only 11,000 followers, have had their tweets highlighted dozens of times in state-controlled Sputnik and RT, as observed by researcher Chris Scott and confirmed by Reuters.
Even as social media companies took action, false or exaggerated reports about voting fraud and delays at the polls circulated throughout the day, in some cases helped along by official Republican accounts and online publications.
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The FBI and the New York attorney general also said they were looking into a spate of mysterious robocalls urging people to stay home, which were reported in multiple battleground states.
Twitter appended fact-checking labels to multiple tweets from the @PhillyGOP account, which was among those using the hashtag #StopTheSteal.
