As the wealthiest 2020 presidential candidate, Mike Bloomberg is likely to use his money for his campaign. As part of his strategy, he poured millions for users to tweet about him – it backfired almost immediately.
Twitter shut down 70 pro-Bloomberg accounts for violating the platform’s rules against “platform manipulation and spam.”
Most less than two months old, the tweets pushed the same pro-Bloomberg messages repeatedly. Many of the posts used identical text, images, links, and hashtags.
The site prohibits accounts to post duplicative content and coordinating with or compensating others to engage in artificial engagement. This policy was first launched in response to allegations of the Russians’ election interference during the 2016 race.
In California, the campaign called for hundreds of temporary workers to post about the candidate on social media. Each worker received $2,500 a month.
Bloomberg’s campaign spokeswoman Sabrina Singh denied these claims. Those involved should identify themselves as working on behalf of Bloomberg because the content shared wasn’t intended to mislead.
So far, the candidate’s campaign seems to be not more than a display of money. He also allegedly uses Tribe, a talent pool of influencers between 1,000 to 10,000 followers on social media.
Twitter’s Shortcomings
Despite the recent efforts against spam accounts in favor of Bloomberg, Twitter still has prominent issues to address.
Just last year, the network refused to run an algorithm to target white supremacists. Apparently, this would end up banning Republicans along with them.
Amnesty International found rampant abuse towards women on the site in 2018. Black women faced more discrimination than anyone else.
When asked to comment, Twitter refused to provide any detail on how the company responds exactly to the epidemic.
Amnesty built the world’s largest crowdsourced data set about online abuse against women. The study used 778 women journalists and politicians in the US and the UK.
Researchers found that they dealt with 7.1 percent abusive or problematic tweets in the past year. Women of color were 34% more likely to be targeted than their white counterparts.
Black women were disproportionately targeted, which Twitter failed to crackdown on. The organization found that they were 84% more likely to receive abusive tweets than white women.
In a more political light, the study also surveyed politicians in the US and the UK. Those in the right parties faced 23% more abusive and problematic tweets from those who lean to the left.
The opposite was true for the media. Journalists working for the right-leaning media received 64% more abusive tweets than the left-leaning organizations.
The data given by Amnesty International is the only data anyone can receive.
Nonetheless, Twitter is Working Harder
Perhaps Twitter is trying to prevent one of its biggest scandals in internet history. No one in their right mind would want a repeat of the chaotic Russian online misinformation invasion back in 2016.
Earlier this month, the company unveiled its new rules addressing synthetic and manipulated media in the platform. Users were prohibited from manipulated media that are likely to cause harm.
The policy covers anything from highly manipulated deepfakes to videos altered with low-tech. These types of tweets will receive labels of manipulated or synthetic media.
If a video could potentially violate its new policy, users should answer three questions for confirmation.
Additionally, the policy implies that the company can act against “cheapfakes,” which are low-tech edits made to deceive others. The doctored video of the Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last year is a significant example.
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