Twitter reveals links to hundreds of Russian-backed bot accounts
29 Sep 2017
After it emerged that Russian-linked operatives bought Facebook ads during the 2016 presidential election to promote divisive tendencies among the US public, Twitter announced on Thursday that it had uncovered a similar scheme within its own social network.
Of the 450 accounts that Facebook released as part of its investigation, Twitter was able to match 22 of those to accounts on its own site. All 22 were immediately suspended and Twitter also uncovered 179 accounts linked to or associated with the original 22 that had no ties to any of the 450 Facebook ones.
According to reports, Twitter VP for Public Policy Colin Crowell met with members of both the Senate and House Select Committees on Intelligence to discuss Russian involvement in the 2016 election. "One congressional investigator has said that the Facebook accounts from the International Research Agency are likely just the 'tip of the iceberg,' " according to a congressional aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, to The Washington Post.
Unlike Facebook, Twitter went into these hearings and voluntarily shared a roundup of three Russia Today news channel accounts that targeted the US market with ads during the 2016 election. Twitter said, the RT accounts spent $274,100 to promote 1,823 ads aimed at followers of major media outlets and sought to promote RT's own coverage of trending news events.
''Twitter deeply respects the integrity of the election process, which is a cornerstone for all democracies. We will continue to strengthen Twitter against attempted manipulation, including malicious automated accounts and spam, as well as other activities that violate our Terms of Service,'' Twitter said.
RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said that she was not aware paying for advertising is now considered suspicious or harmful in a developed democracy such as the US.
''This is forcing us to go a step further and come clean that we also spent money on advertising at airports, in taxis, on billboards, on the Internet, on TV and radio. Even CNN ran our commercials,'' Simonyan said.
''By the way, similar campaigns are conducted by the American media in the Russian segment of Twitter. It'll be very interesting to find out how much they spend on it, who they target and for what purpose.''
