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Twitter has suspended a number of fake accounts that were allegedly run by black followers of US President Donald Trump.
They are believed to have attracted more than a quarter of a million retweets or mentions on Twitter before they were suspended.
The accounts often used profile photos taken from news reports and often used the phrase “Yes, I’m black and I’m voting for Trump!”
The accounts sometimes claimed to be owned by military veterans or members of law enforcement.
Twitter said the accounts violated its rules on spam and platform manipulation.
“Our teams are working diligently to investigate this activity and will take action in accordance with the Twitter Rules if Tweets are found to be in violation,” said a spokeswoman for the social media company.
Twitter’s policy against platform manipulation and spam prohibits coordination between accounts to artificially influence the conversation, including the use of multiple or fake accounts.
Twitter declined to specify the number of accounts suspended or to comment beyond its statement.
Darren Linvill, a social media misinformation researcher at Clemson University in South Carolina who said he had been tracking accounts since Saturday, found more than two dozen accounts that together had 265,000 retweets or mentions on Twitter.
He said the accounts varied in size, but some had attracted tens of thousands of followers.
Linvill said that some of the accounts used photos of African-American men that had appeared in news articles.
Some used identical images of Trump as the headline image.
Linvill said that all the accounts he had been tracking in the group had now been suspended by Twitter, but the damage had already been done.
“It doesn’t matter if Twitter will shut you down in four days, they have already had their impact,” he said.
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