Social Media

Twitter Removes Fake Accounts Posing As Black Pres. Trump Supporters

A Clemson University researcher says some of the accounts linked back to Eastern Europe or Turkey and found a few traces of the Russian alphabet.

Twitter Removes Fake Accounts Posing As Black Pres. Trump Supporters
Matt Rourke / AP

Twitter has removed a group of fake accounts posing as Black supporters of President Trump.

The social media site said it's monitoring for platform manipulation and spam as the presidential election looms. 

Many of the accounts used similar language saying in part, "Yes I'm Black and I'm voting for Trump." The accounts gained 265,000 retweets or Twitter mentions and some of them gained anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 followers even though the accounts were brand new.

A Clemson University researcher who studies disinformation says some of the accounts linked back to Eastern Europe or Turkey. He also found a few traces of the Russian alphabet in online records of the accounts.

The professor also found 31 accounts appeared to be Black conservatives while some others appeared to belong to White House staffers. Twitter has removed those fake accounts as well.