Twitter has deleted more than 10,000 automated accounts posting messages aimed at discouraging people from voting in United States election. It was learned that the accounts wrongly appeared to be from Democrats, after the party flagged the misleading tweets to the social media company.

“We took action on relevant accounts and activity on Twitter,” a Twitter spokesman said in an email.

According to Reuters, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee developed its own system for identifying and reporting malicious automated accounts on social media.

The system was built in part from publicly available tools known as “Hoaxley” and “Botometer” developed by University of Indiana computer researchers.

They allow a user to identify automated accounts, also known as bots, and analyze how they spread information on specific topics.

“We made Hoaxley and Botometer free for anyone to use because people deserve to know what’s a bot and what’s not,” said Filippo Menczer, professor of informatics and computer science at the University of Indiana.

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