Twitter purges accounts behind artificially viral tweets

If you’ve used Twitter for long enough, you’ve probably seen someone retweet a truism or obviously plagiarized quote from accounts that are clearly trying to force their tweets to go viral. You won’t have to put up with some of those accounts from now on, though. Twitter has suspended a horde of accounts notorious for […]

Radio Liberty poll on Stalinist purges ends in epic trolling thread

After Radio Liberty asked Russians to recall the fate of their families in times of repression, the thread was flooded with mocking tweets about “grandparents who died childless after 20 years of executions.” In the early hours of Monday, on the 65th anniversary of Joseph Stalin’s death, the Russian branch of Radio Liberty posted a […]

Facebook purges thousands of fake profiles ahead of UK election

Facebook has doubled its efforts to tackle fake news in the UK. As the nation heads towards a snap general election, the company has removed “tens of thousands” of accounts which it believes were involved in the spread of misinformation. The crack-down is attributed to new detection tools, first announced in April, which can spot […]