Twitter is suspending 70 accounts linked to Michael Bloomberg's campaign for violating its policies, citing platform manipulation and duplicative content
hate speech, millions of fake accounts, russian trolls, trump lies & bigotry & incentivized violence are all ok — but Bloomberg sock puppets? hey THAT'S WHERE WE DRAW THE LINE. #FiddlingWhileRomeBurns 🎻🔥 https://twitter.com/... Caitlin Kelly / @caitlin__kelly : New from @GiladEdelman on Mike Bloomberg's truly outstanding commitment to spending more money than god on his campaign https://www.wired.com/... Nicholas Thompson / @nxthompson : Friends do change friends' votes. But only when their enthusiasm is real, not paid. Which means Bloomberg's new strategy might backfire. https://www.wired.com/... Ed Bott / @edbott : Oh. OK. https://twitter.com/... Michael Raveles / @ravelesm : It looks like Mike Bloomberg's paid twitter trolls got busted! https://twitter.com/... Kurt Schlichter / @kurtschlichter : WHERE'S MY SWEET SWEET HOBBIT CASH? https://twitter.com/... Nomiki Konst / @nomikikonst : Who needs Russian oligarchs meddling with elections when you have an American oligarch doing so? https://twitter.com/... Ari Melber / @arimelber : We've reported on Bloomberg's payments to people to support him — a controversial legal method that skirts laws against paying for votes — now Twitter is suspending some of those Bloomberg-backed accounts https://www.youtube.com/... https://twitter.com/... Zephyr Teachout / @zephyrteachout : 1. Did they sign NDAs? 2. Will the monthly fee go up for adding adjectives? 3. How do you feel about a Republican propagandist running for the Democratic nomination? https://twitter.com/... Shani Olisa Hilton / @shani_o : Scooooop: Twitter is suspending 70 pro-Bloomberg accounts, citing ‘platform manipulation’ https://www.latimes.com/... See also Mediagazer
Los Angeles Times
Context & Ripple Effects
Bloomberg's campaign built its social presence by paying popular accounts to post as enthusiastic supporters — the strategy Wired's editors flagged as risky precisely because paid enthusiasm reads differently from real friendship. Twitter's suspension of 70 campaign-linked accounts for platform manipulation and duplicative content is the first hard enforcement hit against that buy.
The move lands inside an established enforcement arc: Twitter was already suspending over a million accounts a day in its disinformation fight, and had removed hundreds of accounts for coordinated manipulation in 2018. What changed is that the target is a domestic presidential campaign's paid network, not foreign operators. Within days, high-profile Instagram accounts posting sponsored Bloomberg content went private to avoid scrutiny — the campaign adapting rather than stopping.
First-order effects
The Bloomberg campaign loses a slice of its paid amplification network mid-primary, and every account it compensates now carries suspension risk under the same manipulation rules.
Second-order effects
Paid-posting shifts toward private accounts and less traceable formats, as the Instagram switch shows — scrutiny avoidance becomes part of the influencer buy itself.
Third-order effects
If enforcement applies evenly, the distinction between foreign information operations and domestic campaign spending blurs into one compliance category, forcing campaigns to treat paid authenticity as a regulated channel rather than a growth hack.
The trend: Platforms are extending the anti-disinformation machinery built against state-linked operations to domestic political money, pushing paid influence from open feeds into private, harder-to-audit spaces.
Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have been consistently hypocritical in terms of their policies. As if people living in developing countries are lesser beings and their manipulation through social media doesn't matter. 2/3
This is why platforms' claims about combating “coordinated inauthentic behavior” make me 🙄😡 ALL of advertising is “coodinated inauthentic behavior.” That's the point. That's the business model 💸 That's what we need to change. https://twitter.com/...
@MikeBloomberg, how do I sign up to be a $2,500-per-month “deputy field organizer” “to promote the former New York mayor's candidacy within [my] personal social circles.” I guess I just start doing it and then send you a bill? https://www.latimes.com/... #Bloomberg #Bloomberg2020
⬇️ The Bloomberg campaign can do what they want with their Facebook ads. He's spending so much money he doesn't even have to make tough choices with which ads to run or where to run them. https://twitter.com/...
The Bloomberg campaign broke the rules with its paid social media blitz, says Twitter. It just suspended 70 accounts, some belonging to campaign employees who were copy-pasting messages. Scoop from @suhaunah and me. https://www.latimes.com/...
Currently, propaganda+misinformation is belted out by multiple accounts controlled by various Indian political parties, with identical behavior as mentioned in the above article, but Twitter won't consider it as platform manipulation. 3/3
Twitter is suspending 70 accounts on charge of platform manipulation with identical messages, images being posted to prop up Bloomberg's presidential candidacy. This practice was heralded by BJP in India with even Union Ministers joining the act yet no action against them. 1/3 ht…
The most important part of this story may be that Facebook is not doing what Twitter is because it is making so much off Bloomberg's campaign. This is the communications infrastructure for our democracy. Facebook is a democratic mess. https://twitter.com/...
way to set priorities @twitter @jack — hate speech, millions of fake accounts, russian trolls, trump lies & bigotry & incentivized violence are all ok — but Bloomberg sock puppets? hey THAT'S WHERE WE DRAW THE LINE. #FiddlingWhileRomeBurns 🎻🔥 https://twitter.com/...
Friends do change friends' votes. But only when their enthusiasm is real, not paid. Which means Bloomberg's new strategy might backfire. https://www.wired.com/...
We've reported on Bloomberg's payments to people to support him — a controversial legal method that skirts laws against paying for votes — now Twitter is suspending some of those Bloomberg-backed accounts https://www.youtube.com/... https://twitter.com/...
1. Did they sign NDAs? 2. Will the monthly fee go up for adding adjectives? 3. How do you feel about a Republican propagandist running for the Democratic nomination? https://twitter.com/...