Twitter on Thursday revealed 32.242 accounts that have been archived as being linked to state-owned information (misinformation) companies. The Twitter account revealed by the accounts includes three different functions attributed to the People's Republic of China, Russia and Turkey.
As it states, any account and content related to these features has been permanently removed from the Twitter service. In addition, relevant data from this disclosure have been shared with two partners in similar surveys: the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO).
For Turkey in particular, Twitter researchers uncovered a file of 7.340 accounts, which was located in early 2020. The researchers found that this network of accounts used coordinated non-authentic activity, which was aimed primarily at a domestic audience within Turkey. Based on the researchers' analysis of the network's technical indicators and account behavior, the collection of fake and tampered accounts was used to reinforce political narratives favorable to the ruling AKP party and gave strong support to President Erdogan.
The technical signals show that the network is connected to the youth wing of the ruling AKP party and a central network that maintained a significant number of breached accounts. As a result, the network revealed by Twitter includes many compromised accounts associated with organizations critical of President Erdogan and the Turkish government. These breached accounts have been repeatedly targeted by hackers and attempts by government agencies identified above. The wider network was also used for commercial activities, such as spam related to cryptocurrencies.
In relation to China, the revelations concern 23.750 accounts and Russia 1.152.
Source: Ant1.com.cy.