Russian troops and armored vehicles began to enter the territory of Ukraine. Some social media accounts shared images and videos from the eastern Donbas and Luhansk regions. In addition, he became an important source of information by sharing images of Russian helicopters advancing towards Crimea or tank divisions moving towards the border. As the conflict intensified, many researchers who shared this primary material from social media unknowingly suspended their Twitter accounts.
Analysts commented on the situation across Twitter
On the night of February 22, OSINT researcher Kyle Glen was suspended from his account for 12 hours, according to a post from Glen. Security Analyst Oliver Alexander also reported that his account was locked twice in 24 hours. A thread of tweets compiled by Nick Waters, an analyst at the leading OSINT organization Bellingcat, listed more account suspensions.
Alexander, although the exact infraction was not specified in a tweet, He shared a screenshot with the message that the account was locked for violating Twitter rules. The researchers expressed concern that the account suspension could be part of a mass reporting campaign aimed at deactivating OSINT accounts during a Russian invasion.
The spokesperson also received a statement
Twitter spokesperson Elizabeth Busby said in a statement that these accounts were handled by mistake and were not part of a coordinated campaign. In addition, he added:
“We proactively monitor emerging narratives that violate our policies. In this case, we took enforcement action on a series of faulty accounts. We are quickly reviewing these actions. We have proactively re-enabled access to a number of affected accounts. Claims that the errors were the result of a coordinated bot campaign or collective reporting are untrue.”
Twitter spokesperson Elizabeth Busby
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