- Twitter said it erroneously blocked accounts sharing footage from Ukraine.
- It pushed back against claims that the accounts had been the targets of mass reporting.
- "We do not trigger automated enforcements based on report volume, ever," said Twitter's head of site integrity.
Twitter said it mistakenly blocked accounts that were sharing footage from Ukraine, where Russian forces have begun a "full-scale invasion," according to Ukraine's foreign minister.
The suspensions affected Open Source Information (OSINT) accounts, which share footage posted to social media from conflict zones.
"We've been proactively monitoring for emerging narratives that are violative of our policies, and, in this instance, we took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement to Insider.
"We're expeditiously reviewing these actions and have already proactively reinstated access to a number of affected accounts," the Twitter spokesperson added.
When questioned by Insider on what rules the accounts were thought to have broken, a spokesperson pointed to Twitter's synthetic and manipulated media policy — which applies to misinformation.
CNBC reported that roughly a dozen accounts were affected by the erroneous blocks.
Kyle Glen, an OSINT researcher whose account was blocked for 12 hours, tweeted: "It's no coincidence that more than 5 twitter accounts covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine were locked at the same time. What are you doing to prevent the abuse of the report system?"
Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of site integrity, said in a tweet Wednesday that the affected accounts had not been the subject of mass reporting.
"A small number of human errors as part of our work to proactively address manipulated media resulted in these incorrect enforcements," Roth said. He added: "We do not trigger automated enforcements based on report volume, ever, exactly because of how easily gamed that would be."