How does Twitter account moderation work? Dynamics of account creation and suspension on Twitter during major geopolitical events

Abstract

Social media moderation policies are often at the center of public debate, and their implementation and enactment are sometimes surrounded by a veil of mystery. Unsurprisingly, due to limited platform transparency and data access, relatively little research has been devoted to characterizing moderation dynamics, especially in the context of controversial events and the platform activity associated with them. Here, we study the dynamics of account creation and suspension on Twitter during two global political events: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the 2022 French Presidential election. Leveraging a large-scale dataset of 270M tweets shared by 16M users in multiple languages over several months, we identify peaks of suspicious account creation and suspension, and we characterize behaviors that more frequently lead to account suspension. We show how large numbers of accounts get suspended within days of their creation. Suspended accounts tend to mostly interact with legitimate users, as opposed to other suspicious accounts, making unwarranted and excessive use of reply and mention features, and sharing large amounts of spam and harmful content. While we are only able to speculate about the specific causes leading to a given account suspension, our findings contribute to shedding light on patterns of platform abuse and subsequent moderation during major events.