X Suspends 13,000 Accounts Before the American Midterms
The company says it has suspended more than 13,000 accounts tied to three suspected foreign influence operations linked to Iran, Russia and China, which it says used fake accounts to post and amplify political material about candidates across the political spectrum. The announcement came as it set out its rules for the elections on 3 November.
One caution before anything else: this is a company’s own account of its own enforcement, and the numbers have not been independently verified. What it says it found were networks of fake accounts identified through what it calls proactive sweeps under its rules on spam and coordinated inauthentic behaviour. Alongside the suspensions it set out rules against misleading information on how, when or where to vote, attempts to suppress turnout, and voter intimidation including calls for violence near polling stations; users can flag election posts under a “civic integrity” option to request a community note, and the company may label posts that break the rules. It is the second such disclosure in a week — OpenAI said it had closed down two operations run from Russia and Iran that used its chatbot to create fake journalist personas and a covert think tank pushing material against Ukraine. The pattern is old: in 2021 Twitter said it had suspended 238 accounts apparently operating from Iran. What matters now is whether anyone outside the company can check the figures before polling day.