Twitter Suspends Several Accounts Used by Maduro’s Government

(Bloomberg) -- Twitter Inc. suspended more than a dozen accounts linked to Nicolas Maduro’s government and Venezuela’s armed forces for violating the website’s rules, without adding more details.

Accounts representing Maduro’s presidential office and the country’s oil, finance and tourism ministries were temporarily suspended. Other accounts representing branches of the armed forces, including the national guard and the navy, were also suspended. An account for the country’s central bank was reactivated after a brief halt.

Venezuela’s Information Ministry called Twitter’s move a “media siege perpetrated by the United States’ government” and efforts to prevent the dissemination of the work done by Maduro’s government.

A Twitter spokesperson said there are proactive systems that aim to detect platform manipulation at scale as part of a focus to improve the health of conversations on the service. Account owners can appeal the website’s decisions, Twitter said in a statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Vasquez in Caracas Office at avasquez45@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Cancel at dcancel@bloomberg.net, Patricia Laya, Robert Jameson

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