Twitter Mass Suspends Pro-Duterte Accounts For Violating Policy
TWITTER SUSPENDS PRO-DUTERTE ACCOUNTS – Amid the coronavirus crisis in the Philippines, an online battle between Pro-Duterte supporters and critics brewed.
However, Twitter has suspended hundreds of Pro-Duterte accounts for grossly violating Twitter’s spam policies. According to an article from the Washington Post, these are some of the violations:
- Posting duplicate content across multiple accounts
- Creation of duplicate/multiple accounts
- Sending large amounts of unsolicited replies
- Spamming unsolicited mentions
Furthermore, Pro-Duterte supporters on Twitter had dubiously suspicious bot-like traits such as numbers on Twitter handles, few to no followers, and fresh accounts. Some of the accounts were just created this month.
On a previous report, we could recall how authorities arrested several residents of Quezon City. Following this, the #OustDuterte rose as the top trending hashtag in the country.
Afterward, the “Pro-Duterte” accounts fired back with their own #IStandWithThePresident and #YesToABSCBNShutdown. As a response, the critics used #IcantStandThePresident. The following day, the “troll accounts” spammed #OursDuterte.
As per the report, ever since Duterte was elected as the head of the country in 2016, online political support for the admin have been widely manufactured. It was reported that politicians would seek help of “trolls” to create multiple accounts online.
Then, these accounts would spam support to the admin and bash the opposition in a bid to sway public opinion. Moreover, the strategy worked as thousands of real accounts rally behind the admin.
On Facebook, the same thing happens as well. Seemingly, the Pro-Duterte supporters on the platform have been provided a “script” to be copied and pasted across multiple accounts.
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