Twitter Deletes Over 10,000 Bots That Discouraged Dems from Voting

Twitter deleted more than 10,000 bots that posted tweets discouraging people from voting in next week's midterm elections, Reuters reports. Many of the bots represented themselves as Democrats, even as their tweets appeared intended to encourage Democratic voters to stay at home—including ones that reportedly “discouraged Democratic men from voting, saying that would drown out the voice of women.” The platform reportedly took the accounts down in late September and early October after the Democratic party flagged the tweets to the company. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee discovered the accounts by reportedly developing its “own system for identifying and reporting malicious automated accounts,” including using publicly available tools built by University of Indiana computer researchers. “We took action on relevant accounts and activity on Twitter,” a Twitter spokesman told Reuters. After the 2016 presidential election, the company reportedly deleted “millions of accounts” that spread misinformation.