Twitter removes 5,929 Saudi accounts it deems state backed

Twitter app on a mobile phone in Philadelphia, in 2017. (Matt Rourke / AP)

NEW YORK — Twitter has identified and removed nearly 6,000 accounts that it said were part of a co-ordinated effort by Saudi government agencies and individuals to advance the country's geopolitical interests.

In a blog post Friday, Twitter said the removed Saudi accounts were amplifying messages favourable to Saudi authorities, mainly through "aggressive liking, retweeting and replying." While the majority of the content was in Arabic, Twitter said the tweets also amplified discussions about sanctions in Iran and appearances by Saudi government officials in Western media.

The latest crackdown on state-backed social media campaigns came as tech companies step up efforts to tackle misinformation on their services ahead of next year's U.S. presidential elections. The efforts followed revelations that Russians bankrolled thousands of fake political ads during the 2016 elections to sow dissent among Americans.

Twitter's announcement underscores the fact that misinformation concerns aren't limited to the U.S. and Russia.

"Governments have started to launch influence campaigns the same ways commercial enterprises launch campaigns to sell detergent or cars," said James Ludes, a national defence expert who teaches international relations and public policy at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island.

He said the Russian efforts in 2016 showed it was possible to "actually change public attitudes through the targeted use of social media."

While the attempts to root out the campaigns may seem like a game of whack-a-mole, he said companies have at least shown progress in taking steps to identify and root out manipulation campaigns run by foreign powers.

Twitter began archiving tweets and media it deems to be associated with known state-backed information operations in 2018. It shut 200,000 Chinese accounts that targeted Hong Kong protests in August.

The 5,929 accounts removed and added to the archives are part of a larger group of 88,000 accounts engaged in "spammy behaviour" across a wide range of topics. But Twitter isn't disclosing all of them because some might be compromised accounts.

Messages left with Saudi officials in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the country's embassy in Washington were not immediately returned.

The Saudi government has used different tactics to control speech and keep reformers and others from organizing, including employing troll armies to harass and intimidate users online. It has also arrested and imprisoned Twitter users.

In September, Twitter suspended the account of the crown prince's former top adviser, Saud al-Qahtani, who also served as director of the cyber security federation. As with Friday's announcement, Twitter said that account had violated the company's platform manipulation policy.

Last month, two former Twitter employees were charged with acting as agents of Saudi Arabia without registering with the U.S. government. The complaint details a co-ordinated effort by Saudi government officials to recruit employees at the social media giant to look up the private data of Twitter accounts, including email addresses linked to the accounts and internet protocol addresses that can give up a user's location.