Twitter has suspended dozens of Hebrew-language accounts operated by the Church of Almighty God (CAG)—a Christian group banned in China that believes Jesus has been reincarnated as a Chinese female now residing in Queens, N.Y.—ahead of Tuesday’s Israeli elections.
This development was first reported by BuzzFeed News, citing a source familiar with the removals.
CAG’s accounts promoted Israeli right-wing politicians, not including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and that, according to the report, “the vast majority of the content from the accounts, which posted in Hebrew and appeared to use fake names, was focused on religion.”
“Essentially, a queen bee generates the narrative and worker bees generate interactions with those narratives to spread it further or to give it greater credibility,” said the source.
The detections were based on initial work conducted by Israeli researchers Noam Rotem and Yuval Adam, who analyze study social-media manipulation.
A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment on the record to BuzzFeed News, only to confirm the accounts were suspended because they were full of spam.
Last week, an Israeli watchdog report stated that a network of hundreds of mostly fake social-media accounts has meant to boost Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and tarnish his opponents ahead of the elections.
Netanyahu and his party have denied the report, which was released by the Big Bots Project, a research group backed by the left-wing Tides Foundation, which is supported by American-Hungarian billionaire George Soros’ Open Societies Foundation.
