Twitter suspends Thai royalist account tied to influence campaign

Twitter suspends Thai royalist account tied to influence campaign
Account thought to be part of effort to boost royalist messages after months of anti-establishment protests.Twitter has suspended a Thai pro-royalist account linked to the palace that a Reuters analysis found was connected to thousands of others created in recent weeks that spread posts in favour of King Maha Vajiralongkorn and the monarchy.Reuters News Agency found tens of thousands of tweets that an expert said appeared to be from accounts amplifying royalist messaging in a push to counter months of protests calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha and – breaking taboos – the reform of the monarchy.Internal army training documents reviewed by Reuters showed evidence of a coordinated information campaign designed to spread favourable information and discredit opponents.The pro-monarchy @jitarsa_school account was suspended after Reuters sought comment on Wednesday from Twitter on the recent royalist campaign on the social media platform, where protesters have long had a strong presence.Protesters and royalists have cited the importance of social media in propelling the protest movement, which has become the biggest challenge in decades to the monarchy as well as the government of former military leader Prayuth.Created in September, the @jitarsa_school account had more than 48,000 followers before its suspension.“The account in question was suspended for violating our rules on spam and platform manipulation,” a Twitter representative said on Sunday.She said the suspension was in line with the company’s policies and not a result of the Reuters request for comment.The account’s profile had said that it trained people for the Royal Volunteers programme, which is run by the Royal Office.A Facebook page for the Royal Volunteers School, which posts pro-monarchy videos and news of the programme, also identifies the Twitter account as its own.Pro-democracy protesters want a number of reforms to the once untouchable monarchy including that the king relinquish personal control of the royal fortune [Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP] Neither the school nor the Royal Volunteers headquarters responded to requests for comment on the suspension.The “Volunteer Spirit 904” programme was established during the current king’s reign, which began in 2016, to build loyalty to the monarchy.The palace did not respond to a request for comment.It has a policy of not speaking to media and has not commented since the start of protests in July.In recent weeks, royalist hashtags have begun trending on Twitter, an important platform for opponents of the government even before the protests began.The Reuters analysis found that more than 80 percent of the accounts following @jitarsa_school had also been created since the start of September.A sample of 4,600 of the recently created accounts showed that all they did was promote the royalist hashtags – an indication of the kind of activity that would not be associated with regular Twitter users.A sample of 559 retweets