[ad_1]
SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter and Facebook suspended several recently created right-leaning news accounts that post information about voting in highly controversial US elections on Tuesday (November 3) for violating their policies.
Twitter said the accounts had been suspended for violating its policy against “coordination”, posting identical content while appearing to be independent, or engaging in other covert automated behavior. Facebook suspended them for inauthentic behavior.
One of those suspended, SVNewsAlerts, had more than 78,000 followers on Twitter, after adding more than 10,000 last week.
READ: Twitter and Facebook describe actions in posts that claim an early victory in the US elections.
The account frequently warned of election-related unrest and highlighted issues with vote security and reliability. He pointed to accusations of fraud against Democrats and drew attention to rallies and speeches by Republican President Donald Trump.
Other accounts suspended by Twitter include FJNewsReporter, Crisis_Intel, and Faytuks.
A Facebook page also called SVNewsAlerts, which was suspended Tuesday afternoon, had more than 20,000 followers. Facebook declined to comment further.
False or exaggerated reports of voting fraud and delays at the polls circulated on social media throughout the day, in some cases with the help of Republican accounts and online posts.
The FBI and the New York attorney general also said they were investigating a series of mysterious robocalls urging people to stay home, which were reported in various battlefield states.
READ: US Judge Orders Postal Service to Check for Delayed Voting in Battleground States
The #StopTheSteal hashtag rose from a few dozen mentions to more than 2,000 mentions in a 15-minute period in the morning, according to media intelligence firm Zignal Labs.
Zignal said unfounded claims about polling place closures and excessively long lines in Republican-leaning areas in Pennsylvania, one of the most controversial states, received more than 33,000 mentions on Twitter.
Twitter added fact-checking tags to several tweets from the @PhillyGOP account, which was among those using #StopTheSteal. The Philadelphia Republican Party did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the Twitter hashtags.
Far-right sites Breitbart and Gateway Pundit published articles claiming “theft is underway” in Pennsylvania that racked up thousands of shares on Facebook and Twitter.
In a video widely shared among conservative audiences, a Trump poll watcher was seen being rejected from one site. Philadelphia officials investigated and concluded that the man had been mistakenly excluded under an expired law, which required authorization to enter a specific polling place. Then he was admitted.
The video was viewed 2.4 million times on Twitter.
Followers of the QAnon conspiracy movement also spread the reports from Pennsylvania, according to investigators at misinformation tracking firm Alethea Group.
