Twitter Removes More Russian Trolls

News  |  Feb 1, 2019

Twitter revealed this week it has taken down thousands of foreign accounts that spread disinformation in an attempt to sow discord and impact the 2018 midterm elections. 

Washington Post

Twitter said it removed 418 accounts thought to have originated in Russia before Election Day in November but declined to specify exactly when and said it could not link the efforts definitively to the [Internet Research Agency].

Similar tactics also had been used by operatives thought to be in Venezuela: Twitter said it has removed 764 accounts originating in the country that mimicked Russia’s information operations. The company said it removed a majority of these accounts by November 2017, but nearly a quarter of more recently created accounts tweeted 50,000 times about the 2018 midterm election. Twitter said a second “state-backed influence campaign” found and disabled in Venezuela focused on the country’s own citizens.

And Twitter confirmed it found additional malicious activity originating in Iran, part of a campaign first unearthed in 2018 that sought to amplify political messages that had been broadcast by the country’s state-run media. Twitter announced that it removed more than 2,600 accounts thought to be connected to this network. About a third tweeted in English, the company said, a small fraction of which touched on the U.S. midterm election.

Twitter said the newly exposed foreign influence effort was not as widespread as what existed in 2016. 

Twitter also revealed that it took action against nearly 6,000 tweets that sought to discourage voters from casting ballots on Election Day, many of which originated in the United States.

On one hand, Twitter said that the takedowns announced Thursday illustrate its progress two years after Russia’s 2016 disinformation campaign reached hundreds of millions of social-media users ... 

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But the breadth of its revelations — nearly three months after Election Day — also affirms that a wider array of malicious actors worldwide is borrowing from Russia’s information-warfare playbook in a bid to destabilize the United States or push political narratives favorable to their governments. 

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In total, Twitter estimated that the entirety of its users sent more than 99 million tweets between the first primaries in March until Election Day, the “majority” of which came from “individuals expressing their views,” ... 

Russian trolls continue to manipulate other social media platforms too. 

... Facebook said in January that it had removed hundreds of pages that originated in Russia that appeared to be focused on regional weather and sports but served as a way for Russian state-owned media to secretly reach social media users.

Twitter removed some accounts originating in Iran, Russia and Venezuela that targeted U.S. midterm election (WaPo)