Twitter is sweeping out fake accounts like never before, putting user growth at risk

[Ilsa]

Twitter is sweeping out fake accounts like never before, putting user growth at risk
Twitter suspended more than 70 million accounts in May and June, and the pace has continued in July


"Twitter’s growing campaign against bots and trolls – coming despite the risk to the company’s user growth – is part of the ongoing fallout from Russia’s disinformation offensive during the 2016 presidential campaign, when a St. Petersburg-based troll factory was able to use some of America’s most prominent technology platforms to deceive voters on a mass scale to exacerbate social and political tensions.

The extent of account suspensions, which has not previously been reported, is one of several recent moves by Twitter to limit the influence of people it says are abusing its platform. The changes, which were the subject of internal debate, reflect a philosophical shift for Twitter. Its executives long resisted policing misbehavior more aggressively, for a time even referring to themselves as “the free speech wing of the free speech party.”

Twitter’s Vice President for Trust and Safety Del Harvey said in an interview this week the company is changing the calculus between promoting public discourse and preserving safety. She added that Twitter only recently was able to dedicate the resources and develop the technical capabilities to target malicious behavior in this way.

“One of the biggest shifts is in how we think about balancing free expression versus the potential for free expression to chill someone else’s speech,” Harvey said. “Free expression doesn’t really mean much if people don’t feel safe.”

Snip
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/07/06/twitter-is-sweeping-out-fake-accounts-like-never-before-putting-user-growth-risk/?utm_term=.ebf212f6e14d

[Historic NY]

1. User growth to deal with fake accounts and bots....

some morons wrote this for the WP. If its only about numbers, what about those just leaving Twitter because of the fakes, bots etc.

[msongs]

2. twitter, the source of lies, rumour, innuendo and plain out fake news nt