Twitter permanently suspended thousands of accounts in its ongoing effort to fight the spread of disinformation and political discord on its platform, the company announced Friday.
The accounts originated from six different countries. And they included the Twitter account used by Saud al-Qahtani, a former adviser to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and suspected of being involved in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
It’s all a part of Twitter’s seemingly endless task of fighting disinformation.
The Twitter accounts came from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Ecuador and China, according to Twitter’s blog post. Groups of suspended accounts were involved in various information campaigns, using tactics like spreading content through fake accounts and spamming through retweets.
The accounts were suspended for violating Twitter’s policy on platform manipulation, which Twitter defines as large-scale aggressive or deceptive activity that misleads or disrupts people’s social media activity.