Bots flood Twitter with pro-govt messages in Malaysia
kuala lumpur — Just weeks before Malaysia goes to the polls, automated accounts known as bots are flooding Twitter with tens of thousands of pro-government and anti-opposition messages, according to a review of the tweets by Reuters and a United States digital media research institute.
Asked about the matter, San Francisco-based Twitter Inc said it was focused on identifying and suspending accounts that violate its spam policies. “We continue to fight hard to tackle any malicious automation on our platform as well as spam accounts,” it said, without giving specific details.
A source close to the matter said the company had suspended 500 accounts involved in the messages on the Malaysian election since they involved spam or malicious automation.
Twitter bots, accounts which can post, like or resend tweets automatically, are not illegal in Malaysia and seem to be having minimal impact on its election campaign. But they have come under global scrutiny amid probes into Russian meddling in the 2016 United States elections using social media platforms. Ahmad Maslan, the information technology bureau chairman of Prime Minister Najib Razak’s United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), said he did not know who was behind the bot activity and that it was not his team.
The government’s communications and multimedia minister Salleh Said Keruak did not respond to calls or text messages seeking comment. —