Twitter and Facebook block some accounts as false information about the US election spreads online

By Joseph Menn and Katie Paul

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. on Tuesday blocked several recently created and predominantly right-wing news accounts that published information about voting in the hotly contested U.S. election, saying they violated their policies.

Twitter said the accounts were suspended for violating its “coordination” policy by posting identical content while appearing to be independent of each other, or for otherwise engaging in covert and automated behavior.

One of the blocked services, SVNewsAlerts, had more than 78,000 followers on Twitter, after adding over 10,000 in the past week.

The account frequently warned of unrest related to the election and pointed out problems with the security and reliability of the election. It referenced allegations of fraud against Democrats and drew attention to rallies and speeches by Republican President Donald Trump.

In fact, few, if any, major disruptions were reported at polling stations on Tuesday, as civil rights groups and police forces were on high alert to avoid potential disruptions to voter turnout. (nL1N2HP0Y8)

Other accounts banned by Twitter included FJNewsReporter, Crisis_Intel and Faytuks. Some of the accounts suggested readers follow the others in the past.

Facebook also blocked several accounts of the US pages SV News and FJ News, citing inauthentic behavior as the reason. The SV page had more than 20,000 followers.

Some of the blocked accounts were closely followed by Russian media, which are accused of interfering in the 2016 election. Both the tweets of SVNewsAlerts and Faytuks, which had only 11,000 followers, were highlighted dozens of times in state-controlled media Sputnik and RT, as observed by researcher Chris Scott and confirmed by Reuters.

Despite social media companies taking action, false or exaggerated reports of voter fraud and election delays continued to circulate throughout the day, in some cases abetted by official Republican accounts and online publications.

The FBI and New York’s attorney general also said they were investigating a spate of mysterious robocalls urging people to stay home that have been reported in several swing states. (nL1N2HP18A)

Twitter added fact-checking labels to several tweets from the @PhillyGOP account, which used the hashtag #StopTheSteal, among others. The Philadelphia Republican Party did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the Twitter labels.

Far-right websites Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit both published articles claiming that “the steal is in progress” in Pennsylvania, which were shared thousands of times on Facebook and Twitter.

According to media analytics firm Zignal Labs, the number of mentions of #StopTheSteal rose from a few dozen to over 2,000 within 15 minutes that morning.

Zignal said unsubstantiated claims about closed polling places and excessively long lines in Republican-leaning areas of Pennsylvania, one of the most hotly contested states, were mentioned more than 33,000 times on Twitter.

Alex Stamos, former chief technology officer at Facebook and now director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, told reporters there had been a coordinated effort to deliberately exaggerate some problems.

“In Pennsylvania in particular, this example is proof that there is something nefarious going on here and not just a random mistake that happens all the time,” he said in a conference call organized by the Election Integrity Partnership.

In a video shared by many conservative viewers, including Trump’s two sons, a poll watcher can be seen being sent away from a polling station by Trump. The video has been viewed 2.5 million times on Twitter.

Philadelphia authorities investigated the case and concluded that the man had been wrongly denied entry to a particular polling place. The law required him to be given a permit to enter a particular polling place. He was then allowed in.

Supporters of the QAnon conspiracy movement also spread the reports from Pennsylvania, say researchers at the disinformation firm Alethea Group.

(Reporting by Joseph Menn and Katie Paul; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Sonya Hepinstall)