More Than 70 Accounts Promoting Bloomberg's Campaign Banned On Twitter

Twitter Inc. TWTR banned at least 70 accounts promoting Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg's campaign starting Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported.

What Happened

"We have taken enforcement action on a group of accounts for violating our rules against platform manipulation and spam," Twitter told the L.A. Times in a statement.

As per the official rules posted on its website, Twitter forbids any "attempts to artificially influence conversations through the use of multiple accounts, fake accounts, automation and/or scripting."

Some of the accounts have been banned permanently, Twitter said, while others may be reinstated if users can prove that they control the accounts. Both unpaid supporters and campaign volunteers could be facing the ban for repeating the same tweet at a mass scale, L.A. Times noted.

A spokeswoman for the Bloomberg campaign, Sabrina Singh, told the L.A. Times that they require all "deputy field organizers" to identify themselves on social media working on behalf of the campaign.

Why It Matters

The Bloomberg campaign recently hired hundreds of workers to post messages promoting their bid for the 2020 presidential election on their personal social media platforms for $2,500 a month.

"Through Outvote [a voter-engagement app], content is shared by staffers and volunteers to their network of friends and family and was not intended to mislead anyone," Singh told the L.A. Times.

Bloomberg was a late entrant to the Democratic race, formally filing for the nomination in November last year, and would be contending in his first Democratic primary on Super Tuesday on March 3.

The billionaire entrepreneur participated in his first Democratic debate last week, and things didn't seem to go his way, as his record as the Mayor of New York, including the "stop and frisk" policy, received the heat from other Democratic candidates.

Price Action

Twitter's shares closed 1.9% lower at $38.31 on Friday.