Twitter to Suspend 70 Pro-Bloomberg Accounts for 'Platform Manipulation'

Twitter began suspending 70 accounts tweeting in favor of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s 2020 presidential campaign. The social media site says that the pro-Bloomberg accounts are in violation of the platform’s policy on spam and “platform manipulation.”

The suspensions were attributed to violations of Twitter’s “Platform Manipulation and Spam Policy,” according to a report by Los Angeles Times. “We have taken enforcement action on a group of accounts for violating our rules against platform manipulation and spam,” said a spokesperson for Twitter.

The report added that many of the pro-Bloomberg accounts had been created within the last few months, and that the tweets published by accounts would oftentimes use identical messaging, images, links, and hashtags.

One of the identical tweets — which appeared to be published verbatim by multiple pro-Bloomberg accounts — simply read, “A President Is Born: Barbra Streisand sings Mike’s praises: check out her tweet,” and was accompanied by a Bitly URL link.

Twitter says the Bloomberg campaign has violated its rules against “creating multiple accounts to post duplicative content,” and “posting identical or substantially similar Tweets or hashtags from multiple accounts you operate,” as well as “coordinating with or compensating others to engage in artificial engagement or amplification, even if the people involved use only one account,” reports Los Angeles Times.

The report added that Bloomberg’s campaign has hired hundreds of “deputy field organizers” to post pro-Bloomberg content on social media, as well as promote the former New York City mayor within their own personal social circles.

“We ask that all of our deputy field organizers identify themselves as working on behalf of the Mike Bloomberg 2020 campaign on their social media accounts,” said Bloomberg campaign spokesperson Sabrina Singh in a statement.

“Through Outvote [a voter-engagement app], content is shared by staffers and volunteers to their network of friends and family and was not intended to mislead anyone,” she added.

Twitter had decided that those running the pro-Bloomberg accounts have violated the platform’s policy against artificially boosting engagement on tweets and using deliberately misleading profile information, according to Los Angeles Times.

In a recent episode of The Charlie Kirk Show, Donald Trump Jr. scrutinized Bloomberg for “paying people a lot of money” to create a perceived pro-Bloomberg presence on social media.

“It is literally a case study to see if you can spend enough money to buy and manipulate the American people,” said Trump. Jr., “because he can’t do it with his own personality — the one thing he can’t buy is personality.”

According to Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg’s campaign is paying its “deputy field organizers” $2,500 per month.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.