The short message service Twitter has stopped according to media reports, another disinformation campaign in the run-up to the US congressional election. Thousands of fictitious accounts on which Democrats allegedly called for non-participation in the election on Tuesday had been erased in September and October, US media reported, citing Twitter. It appeared that the accounts had been controlled from the US.
According to the news channel CNN, campaigners of the Democrats made Twitter aware of the fake accounts. In the presidential election campaign of 2016, there had already been heavy interference, for which Russia is blamed.
Moscow rejects allegations
Moscow, which rejects the allegations, was not only behind the hacker attacks on the environment of the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, according to intelligence of the US intelligence services, but led at that time also large-scale disinformations on the Internet to poison the political climate.
Other online networks and Internet services, such as Facebook and Google, have recently cleared numerous counterfeit accounts. There were connections to Iran and Russia. By deleting fake accounts, the number of active Twitter users in the past quarter had dropped by nine million, the company had announced in October.
US President Donald Trump, who uses Twitter extensively, recently complained that the company was cracking down on its followers. Many conservatives in the US accuse the online networks of purposely designing their platforms in such a way that left-liberal political content appears prominently, while conservative content is discriminated against or completely suppressed.
