Twitter Suspends Fake Accounts Posing As Black Trump Supporters

Topline

Twitter on Tuesday halted an unknown number of fake accounts claiming to be Black people supporting Donald Trump, for breaching the platform’s ban on manipulating the site and spreading spam, while the company is investigating who is behind the accounts three weeks out from Election Day, the Washington Post first reported.

Twitter CEO and cofounder Jack Dorsey

AFP via Getty Images

Key Facts

The accounts were identified for using uniform language in tweets that included things like: “YES I’M BLACK AND I’M VOTING FOR TRUMP.”

Some of the accounts employed “digital blackface,” according to Darren Linvill, an associate professor at Clemson University, meaning they falsely represented themselves by using photos of real Black people likely sourced from across the internet.

The Washington Post first reported that Twitter is investigating the accounts (and their source) and could suspend other such fake accounts.

Twitter said in a statement: “Our teams are working diligently to investigate this activity and will take action in line with the Twitter Rules if Tweets are found to be in violation.”

Linvill says the accounts, of which he found more than 24, had been retweeted or mentioned more than 265,000 times.

Big Number

10%. That’s the percentage of Black voters both nationally and in key swing states with larger Black populations who plan on voting for Trump, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Key Background

Social media platforms are scrambling to tighten and enforce policies on misinformation and disinformation in the run-up to November 3, as they seek to avoid a repeat of the 2016 poll that saw Russia interfering through troll accounts, and other tactics, on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Twitter has banned all political ads on the platform and is flagging misleading posts and content more prominently (including President Trump’s), while Facebook has succumbed to pressure from lawmakers and campaigners and made a last-minute U-turn on certain forms of misinformation spreading, including those related to Covid-19, QAnon and Holocaust denial. Facebook also won’t allow new ads in the week up to Election Day, but that won’t stop ads already running from playing out, nor will existing ads be fact-checked. In this latest case on Twitter, however, the accounts were not identified by Twitter itself, but by researchers, highlighting the loopholes that still exist in combating fake accounts, despite Twitter’s own policy against spam and platform manipulation.