section_path: Society/Censorship and moderation/Moderation of tweets
section_name: Moderation of tweets
paragraph_text: Moderation of tweets
  
  Twitter removed more than 88,000 propaganda accounts linked to Saudi Arabia. Twitter removed tweets from accounts associated with the Russian Internet Research Agency that had tried to influence public opinion during and after the 2016 US election. In June 2020, Twitter also removed 175,000 propaganda accounts that were spreading biased political narratives for the Chinese Communist Party, the United Russia Party, or Turkey's President Erdogan, identified based on centralized behavior. Twitter also removed accounts linked to the governments of Armenia, Egypt, Cuba, Serbia, Honduras, Indonesia and Iran. Twitter suspended Pakistani accounts tied to government officials for posting tweets about the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan. In February 2021, Twitter removed accounts in India that criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi 's government for its conduct during Indian farmers' protests in 2020–2021.
  
  At the start of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, numerous tweets reported false medical information related to the pandemic. Twitter announced a new policy in which they would label tweets containing misinformation going forward. In April 2020, Twitter removed accounts which defended President Rodrigo Duterte 's response to the spread of COVID-19 in the Philippines. In November 2020, then Chief Technology Officer and future CEO of Twitter Parag Agrawal, when asked by MIT Technology Review about balancing the protection of free speech as a core value and the endeavour to combat misinformation, said: "Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation... focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed."
  
  Musk had been critical of Twitter's moderation of misinformation prior to his acquisition of the company. After the transition, Musk eliminated the misinformation moderation team, and stopped enforcing its policy on labeling tweets with misleading information about coronavirus. While Twitter had joined a voluntary program under the European Union's to fight disinformation in June 2022, Musk pulled the company out of the program in May 2023.