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Twitter is shutting down bot accounts posting pro-Saudi tweets about missing dissident Khashoggi (TWTR)
Twitter said it could not definitively link the accounts to the Saudi government.
Surveillance footage published by Turkish newspaper Hurriyet purports to show Jamal Khashoggi entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.
Twitter is suspending hundreds of bot accounts involved in a coordinated effort to flood the service with political messages about the suspected murder of a prominent Saudi dissident.
The accounts have unleashed a barrage of messages in recent days that support the Saudi government's account in its role in the disappearance of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, according to NBC News which reported about the situation on Thursday. Twitter began cracking down on the accounts after it was notified, according to NBC News.
Twitter, however, says it's been aware of such accounts for "some time" and that it was already in the process of shutting them down, a spokesperson told Business Insider on Friday.
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Bots are automated accounts that are used by spammers, hackers and other miscreants to launch coordinated social media campaigns and denial of service attacks. They have been credited with spreading misinformation, notoriously during the 2016 presidential election. Ahead of midterm elections in November, Twitter has made an effort to be transparent in steps it's taking to curtail misuse of its platform, especially by foreign agents.
The flagged accounts reportedly sent out hundreds of identical tweets in droves that disputed the widely believed notion that Saudi Arabia was involved in the disappearance of Khashoggi, who is feared dead.
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