Social media platform Twitter has removed more than 10,000 state-backed accounts that were found to be disseminating disinformation and encouraging unrest.

The decision is part of a series of actions taken by social media networks in an effort to crack down on manipulation by state-controlled entities.

According to Twitter, nearly half of the accounts (4,302) were being operated by the Chinese Government to “sow discord about the protest movement in Hong Kong”.

4,258 accounts from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were deleted due to tweets “often employing false personae and tweeting about regional issues, such as the Yemeni Civil War and the Houthi Movement.”

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A further 271 accounts in Egypt and the UAE were also shutdown for spreading misinformation about Qatar and other countries such as Iran. Twitter said “these accounts were interconnected in their goals and tactics: a multi-faceted information operation” and were amplifying messages that were supportive of the Saudi Government.

Twitter found that many of those accounts were created and managed by DotDev, a private tech company operating in the UAE and Egypt, and has subsequently suspended the firm and all accounts associated with it permanently.

Previously, Twitter had disclosed it had identified a network of more than 200,000 fake accounts based in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which it said were attempting to sow discord about the protest movement in Hong Kong.

Elsewhere, accounts were removed in Ecuador (1,019) and Spain (259). The accounts in Ecuador were linked to the PAIS Alliance political party. Many were identified as fake profiles and were “engaged in spreading content about President Moreno’s administration, focusing on issues concerning Ecuadorian laws on freedom of speech, government censorship, and technology”.

The fake accounts in Spain were being operated by Partido Popular, and were active for a short period of time falsely boosting public sentiment online. Twitter said most of the accounts were using tactics such as hashtag manipulation and retweet spam.

On its blog, the company said: “Nearly one year on, the archive is now the largest of its kind in the industry. Thousands of researchers have made use of these data sets that contain millions of individual Tweets and more than one terabyte of media. Using our archive, these researchers have conducted their own investigations and shared their insights and independent analyses with the world.

“Transparency and openness are deep-seated values at the heart of Twitter, which define and guide our methodology around these disclosures. Going forward, we will continue to enhance and refine our approach to disclosing state-affiliated information operations on our service.”