Moderation of tweets Twitter removed more than 88,000 propaganda accounts linked to Saudi Arabia. Twitter removed tweets from accounts associated with the Russian Internet Research Agency that had tried to influence public opinion during and after the 2016 US election. In June 2020, Twitter also removed 175,000 propaganda accounts that were spreading biased political narratives for the Chinese Communist Party, the United Russia Party, or Turkey's President Erdogan, identified based on centralized behavior. Twitter also removed accounts linked to the governments of Armenia, Egypt, Cuba, Serbia, Honduras, Indonesia and Iran. Twitter suspended Pakistani accounts tied to government officials for posting tweets about the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan. In February 2021, Twitter removed accounts in India that criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government for its conduct during Indian farmers' protests in 2020–2021. At the start of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, numerous tweets reported false medical information related to the pandemic. Twitter announced a new policy in which they would label tweets containing misinformation going forward. In April 2020, Twitter removed accounts which defended President Rodrigo Duterte's response to the spread of COVID-19 in the Philippines. In November 2020, then Chief Technology Officer and future CEO of Twitter Parag Agrawal, when asked by MIT Technology Review about balancing the protection of free speech as a core value and the endeavour to combat misinformation, said: "Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation … focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed." In November 2022, however, Twitter stopped enforcing its policy on labeling tweets with misleading information about coronavirus. This came in the light of Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter earlier that year. Birdwatch As part of its means to moderate misinformation, Twitter launched its crowd-sourced Birdwatch program in January 2021. Trusted users in the program will have the ability to monitor tweets and replies that may include misinformation and countermessages providing fact-checking as to have Twitter tag these messages appropriately from the Birdwatch community. In November 2021, Twitter announced an update to the Birdwatch moderation tool, meant to limit the visibility of contributors' identities by creating aliases for their accounts. In March 2022, Twitter expanded access to notes made by the Birdwatch moderators, giving a randomized set of US users the ability to view the notes attached to tweets and