Twitter takes aim at global ‘fake news’ epidemic, banning 10K users

The very idea of “fake news” feels like an American issue, with President Donald Trump leading the charge against the phony and the fabricated.

Much of this sentiment comes to us courtesy of the mainstream media, who have long been radicalizing and mutating into a bizarre amalgam known as “infotainment”.  Their sensationalism knows no bounds and has pushed the limits of free speech, particularly as it pertains to social media.

As companies like Twitter struggle to remain on the right side of First Amendment history, their clear and obvious biases have been apparent.  They constantly rage against conservative ideologies, censoring those who are simply sharing their political opinions.

But this isn’t merely an American phenomena, and Twitter is now taking aim at over ten thousand users who they have deemed to be “fake news”.

TechCrunch reports that Twitter has deleted another 10,112 accounts across six countries that the company believes spreading misinformation and encouraging political unrest in countries with sensitive political climates. Twitter removed more than 4,000 accounts in the United Arab Emirates and China, over 1,000 in Equador, and 259 in Spain.

The full data trove of accounts has been posted for researchers to go through, the entire archive is comprised of millions of tweets reaching one terabyte in size. The latest account removals mark a year of Twitter’s efforts identify and remove accounts that spread political misinformation in attempts to change public sentiment, an issue that has a wide-ranging impact past social media and can actually influence democratic processes such as election and referendum voting.

The enormity of this action will certainly cause a headache for freedom watchdog groups who must now comb through this immense amount of data in hopes of keep Twitter in check.