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Right-Wing Twitter Users Are Very Upset That Twitter Is Taking Action Against Bot Accounts

(Creative Commons / Flickr.com/mkhmarketing)

Right-wing media figures are throwing a massive temper tantrum this morning after Twitter began purging bot accounts from the platform, causing some accounts to lose thousands of followers.

Twitter has not responded to requests for comment from various publications, but last week social media bots were drawn into the spotlight after special counsel Robert Mueller handed down an indictment of 13 Russians who allegedly used networks of the automated accounts on social media to stoke political and social divisions in the U.S. Despite the fact that a locked-out Twitter account can be reactivated after a user verifies their account with a phone number, right-wing pundits used the news to further their narrative that they are routinely censored for holding conservative views. Others just seemed upset that they were personally losing followers on the platform.

Project Veritas president James O’Keefe, who has presented video footage of Twitter employees speaking with undercover operatives to claim that Twitter is baselessly censoring conservative viewpoints, weighed in:

Candace Owens of Turning Point USA claimed that only conservative accounts were affected:

Scott Presler took the opportunity to do some shameless shilling and urged his followers to vote Republican if they were mad about the lock-out:

Peter Imanuelson, a far-right activist and Holocaust denier, said that purging fake accounts was a good thing, but that it seemed that “many ordinary accounts, especially conservative ones have been taken falsely at same time”:

The Twitter account affiliated with Gavin McInnes’ bizarre “Proud Boys” frat reported it had also lost “a bunch of followers.” Earlier this week, Facebook shut down the Proud Boys Facebook page:

Dan Bongino said that Twitter should be “ashamed” of clearing out fake accounts and that conservatives “have to organize a response”:

Far-right activist Katie Hopkins said she imagined the lock-out was a “conservative purge”:

As Twitter removed accounts, conspiracy theorist Joe Biggs remarked “shit it just dropped another 1,000”: