The social media service Twitter is believed to have suspended thousands of accounts for being automated bots, or for other policy violations, drawing outcry from fringe conservative media figures who lost followers in the move.
Many of these figures, such as pro-Trump host Bill Mitchell and white nationalist Richard Spencer, took to the service to complain about losing a small portion of their followers in the move. Other accounts were suspended until verifying that they were run by people.
Twitter did not confirm the number of accounts that it suspended but released a statement saying that it was continuing to identify “suspicious account behaviors” that represented automated activity or other violations of its terms of service.
The company said that its work to remove malicious and fake accounts from its service included asking users to confirm a phone number so they can “confirm a human is behind it.”
“That’s why some people may be experiencing suspensions or locks,” the company said in a statement from spokeswoman Emily Horne. “Note that when an account is locked and being challenged to provide a phone number, it is removed from follower counts until it provides a phone number. This is part of our ongoing, comprehensive efforts to make Twitter safer and healthier for everyone.”
The move comes as Twitter is under increased scrutiny nationally for its role, however unintentional, in becoming a platform for false, misleading and hateful information in the run-up to the 2016 election and afterward, along with other leading social media and technology companies such as Google and Facebook. Special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, listed the company in a recent court complaint as one of the main targets of a sophisticated and illegal propaganda operation run by a Kremlin-linked troll farm in St. Petersburg, Russia.
In response to the criticism, Twitter has taken some steps to improve its service, weeding out more than 50,000 accounts that it identified as being linked to Russia and its operatives, and notifying nearly 700,000 users who interacted with these accounts.