Twitter has finally clamped down on some of the 900 abusive bots that promoted the Guptas‚ talked about white monopoly capital (WMC) and linked to defamatory sites such as WMC leaks.
Marketer Andrew Fraser and others such as journalist Stuart Theobald reported these accounts a few months ago.
Fraser checked his list of bots and found of the 900 bots‚ 455 were suspended on Sunday. Some of the accounts that had been shut had noticeably fake names such as Khumbu Malan‚ Winzo Benneth‚ Avelo Kopano‚ Jakobo Brits as well as Lineo and Ammy.
Fraser said Malan had tweeted very defamatory and abusive content about former Business Day editor and columnist Peter Bruce. Accounts @CountrydutySA‚ called Better than Zapiro‚ @ZAPIRO have also been shut down.
Fraser and others were told by Twitter on Sunday that these accounts had been shut down because they broke Twitter rules.
Twitter accounts can be reported for impersonation‚ abusive content‚ unwanted sexual advances‚ violence‚ very graphic content and hateful speech. People cannot report tweets merely because people do not agree with their ideology.
The WMC leak website twitter handle was shut down on Sunday. It is @WMC–LEAKS.
The WMC website‚ which remains up‚ has published defamatory stories about Bruce and continues to do so with its latest story saying he is paid money by political groups and "white monopoly capital".
Following the WMC–Leaks Twitter account finally being shut down‚ it opened a new account WMCLEAKS– that now has 40 tweets and 14 followers.
Theobald said he thought he may have reported one of the recently shut down accounts at least six months ago.
Fraser asked why Twitter did not take action sooner after complaints.
He said Twitter had the software ability to shut down hateful accounts sooner.
He said that if your Twitter account was set as being located in Germany‚ you could not see any pro-Nazi tweets as Nazi sentiment was illegal.
This means Twitter‚ when incentivised‚ is able to build software to stop certain defamatory tweets from appearing on a person’s timeline.
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