201 Twitter Accounts Tied to Russia Operatives Bent on Interfering With U.S. Elections and Democracy
Executives from Twitter met behind closed doors with congressional investigators Thursday, and revealed that the same Russian operatives who placed at least $150,000 in 2016 presidential election campaign ads on Facebook were also using 201 accounts of Twitter, according to The Washington Post.
In a blog post Twitter explained further, noting it had identified and closed 201 accounts tied to Russian operatives. The social media company also announced it had identified three accounts from RT, formerly Russia Today, which is a propaganda arm of the Kremlin. Those three accounts “spent $274,100 in U.S. ads in 2016.”
“Of the roughly 450 accounts that Facebook recently shared as a part of their review, we concluded that 22 had corresponding accounts on Twitter. All of those identified accounts had already been or immediately were suspended from Twitter for breaking our rules, most for violating our prohibitions against spam.”
“In addition, from those accounts we found an additional 179 related or linked accounts, and took action on the ones we found in violation of our rules. Neither the original accounts shared by Facebook, nor the additional related accounts we identified, were registered as advertisers on Twitter.”
Russia has and continues to interfere in America’s democracy, election, and national conversation.Â
“After a weekend when Americans took to social media to debate President Trump’s admonishment of N.F.L. players who do not stand for the national anthem, a network of Twitter accounts suspected of links to Russia seized on both sides of the issue with hashtags such as #boycottnfl, #standforouranthem and #takeaknee,” The New York Times reported Wednesday evening.
The Times observes that “researchers from a public policy group have been following hundreds of accounts to track the continuing Russian operations to influence social media discourse and foment division in the United States.”
And the paper says “there is evidence that Twitter may have been used even more extensively than Facebook in the Russian influence campaign last year.”
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