Following a Washington Post report about Twitter purging allegedly fake and suspicious accounts, President Donald Trump recommended the site also suspend the accounts of the “Failing New York Times” and the “propaganda machine for Amazon, the Washington Post.”
The Post’s story revealed that during May and June, the site suspended more than 70 million accounts, and is continuing at the same pace.
Trump responded to the news by urging Twitter to suspend the accounts of The New York Times and The Washington Post:
The purge of fake accounts comes after Twitter revealed its plan to help promote “healthy conversations” on the site in May.
On June 26, 2018, Twitter announced new plans to help fight against “suspicious accounts” and “malicious behavior.” As part of the new crackdown, Twitter claims new accounts will need to have a valid email address or phone number to sign up for the site and older accounts will be audited to detect whether they are “follow spammers. Accounts that continuously use the same hashtag or reply to users without any response from that particular user may need to reset their password or solve a reCAPTCHA puzzle.
The mass deletion of Twitter accounts also comes as a response to concerns over Russian bots influencing the election through social media.
Markets Insider reported Twitter shares fell more than 8 percent in light of the news about the deleted accounts.
