A SCOTTISH Member of the European Parliament has warned that fake Scots are taking to Twitter and spreading fake news.

The SNP’s Alyn Smith says he is worried that “a small but significant amount of Twitter accounts that are pretending to be from Scotland, but are actually not” could leave people “vulnerable to misleading content”.

He has called on the social media behemoth to start verifying that people are based where they claim to be based.

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It comes ahead of the publication tomorrow of a study on Scottish Twitter, commissioned by Smith, entitled Scotland And Social Media: Trolls Under The Bridge.

Extracts from the research, already released, claimed that 4.25% of Scottish Twitter activity is identifiable as potentially “malign” – run by trolls and bots and attempting to influence and poison the public discourse. Of the 36.4 million tweets analysed, a potential maximum of 4.2m tweets could be malign, the report warns.

It goes on to say that Scotland’s social media user community is likely to see itself increasingly targeted by bots and trolls. Smith has called for a “Scotland Verified” status.

He explained: “Scottish online discourse, like all our discourse, is largely positive, raucous and often very funny. But there is a minority that is looking to use it for ill, and there are issues with online anonymity giving a cover for abuse or misleading content.

“It would be easy for Twitter to make the accounts clearly from one place or another, as some people choose to do presently.

“My view is that there is a small but significant amount of Twitter accounts that are pretending to be from Scotland, but are actually not, and that may leave us vulnerable to misleading content.

“The change I propose is quite straightforward, and would in no way limit free speech or expression. It would instead make clear, literally, where someone is coming from, which would enable people viewing the output of such accounts to make more of a judgment on how valid the output of those accounts is.”

The MEP has written to Twitter UK boss Bruce Daisley, asking him to look at the plan.

A Twitter spokesperson told The National: “Twitter’s singular focus is improving the health of the public conversation. Part of this work involves surfacing more credible, quality content for people who use the platform, and challenging malicious spam and automation which disrupts the conversation.

“We are now challenging and identifying 10m spammy or automated accounts every single week, and thwarting over 500,000 suspicious logins every single day. Targeted abuse and harassment are a violation of the Twitter Rules”.