SAN FRANCISCO – Twitter suspended Tuesday several fake accounts purporting to be African Americans who support President Donald Trump and which had succeeded in garnering several thousand followers in just a few days.
“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,” said a spokesman for the San Francisco-based company.
Darren Linvill, a professor at Clemson University, published some examples of the fake accounts on Twitter, accusing them of using “digital black face.”
“Yes IM BLACK AND IM VOTING FOR TRUMP!” said one of the examples he shared, under the name of Ted Katya on Sept. 17. “Libs wont like that but I dont care!!!”
Most of the accounts “used images of real Americans in their profiles,” Linville said, and some of them had tens of thousands of followers.
Twitter suspended the identified profiles because they were deceiving users about their intention and their identity, and were therefore deemed to be manipulating public debate. (AFP)
