The move brings to 343 the number of accounts suspended by Twitter since Israeli elections were announced last month, Elad Ratson of Israel’s Foreign Affairs Ministry tweeted on Monday. Ratson is the ministry’s director of research and development.
The new group of 61 accounts had a total of more than 28,000 followers, and most of them were in English.#Elections Israel: Twitter suspends yet another batch of 61 accounts with a total of 28,041 followers, all linked to foreign #FakeNews manipulation campaigns aimed at Israeli public. A total of 343 #bot accounts suspended since elections announcedCSV: https://t.co/0JXKbwIMEu pic.twitter.com/mGgrA2v0zx
— Elad Ratson (@EladRatson) January 28, 2019
A Twitter spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post: "We have carefully reviewed these accounts and our analysis does not indicate any malicious activity or State-sponsored activity." Apparently, the accounts were mostly suspended due to porn spam violations.
Meanwhile, Facebook announced in a statement on Monday that it would launch in various countries, including Israel, “additional tools to help prevent foreign interference and make political and issue advertising on Facebook more transparent.” Advertisers will need to be authorized to purchase political ads; Facebook will give people more information about ads related to politics and issues; and it will create a publicly searchable library of these ads for up to seven years, the statement said.
The new tools will be launched in March, in the last weeks of Israel’s election campaign, with a global rollout planned for June.
On Sunday, the Speaker of Israel’s Knesset, Yuli Edelstein, rejected a request by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean, to which Israel belongs, to monitor the national election set for April 9, the Times of Israel reported. The interparliamentary group, made up of 26 European, North African and Middle Eastern parliaments, noted that foreign and local groups had threatened to attempt to influence the elections, mostly on-line, according to the report.
Edelstein called the request “an unparalleled expression of arrogance.”