Twitter bans left-wing accounts
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Twitter accounts run by activists linked to the Occupy movement have been suspended after the social network continued its attempted crackdown on bots and fake accounts. Around 80 activists with a collective following of five million people are thought to have had their accounts suspended.

Organisers and activists say that their Twitter accounts were suspended without an explanation from the social network. Many of the accounts were created in 2011 and 2012 at the height of the Occupy movements.

The mass suspension of accounts linked to the Occupy movement comes as Twitter steps up efforts to clean up its platform. The company has reportedly suspended 1,500 accounts over the past week that were suspected of being run by members of pro-Trump 4chan members masquerading as liberal activists, according to anonymous source speaking to The New York Times.

"Twitter's singular objective is to improve the health of the public conversation," the company said in a statement. "This work includes protecting the integrity of elections and taking robust steps to tackle spam, malicious activity and automation."

Twitter has been struggling to clean up its platform since 2016, when allegations of bot interference in elections, as well as enabling harassment and abuse of individuals, embroiled the social network in controversy. But Twitter's attempt to clamp down on disinformation and propaganda is seemingly catching out legitimate accounts too. Members of the Occupy movement claim that Twitter is "banning people for the crime of speaking to each other".

Its latest crackdown follows on from Facebook announcing last week that it would be taking aggressive action against "inauthentic activity" - including bots and fake accounts - on its network. To date, 559 pages and 221 accounts have been suspended. Pages caught up in the Facebook ban include the Free Thought Project, a free speech page with 3.1 million followers, and End the Drug War, which had 460,000 followers.

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