Twitter removes 130 Iranian accounts for trying to disrupt the US Presidential Debate

Social networking giant Twitter said today that it removed around 130 Iranian Twitter accounts for attempting to disrupt the public conversation during last night's first Presidential Debate for the US 2020 Presidential Election.

Twitter said it learned of the accounts following a tip from the US Federal Bureau of Investigations.

"We identified these accounts quickly, removed them from Twitter, and shared full details with our peers, as standard," the social network said today.

"They [the accounts] had very low engagement and did not make an impact on the public conversation," it added.

Twitter said it plans to publish details about the removed accounts and their tweets on its Transparency portal's section for influence operations.

This marks the second time this month that Twitter has intervened to take down an influence operation on its website following an FBI tip. Twitter previously removed accounts tied to PeaceData, a news site that published misleading articles about world politics, which the FBI claimed was a Russian influence operation.

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