Social media giant Twitter announced that is has suspended over 1,000 accounts it believes to be linked to Russian active measures – the propaganda and disinformation campaigns Russian intelligence services use to influence politics. The company believes the accounts are linked to the Internet Research Agency, an agency that works with Russian intelligence services to spread content intended to interfere politically in other nations.
The company said on Friday that it has found 3,814 accounts believed to be linked to the Internet Research Agency. They say those accounts posted 175,993 tweets during the 2016 election. Twitter also says it found 13,512 new automated, or “bot” accounts, linked to the Kremlin. The total number of Kremlin-linked accounts the company has found to date is 50,258.
The company also said it will notify close to 700,000 people to let them know that they either liked, retweeted or followed Russian-linked accounts, honoring a request from Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT). Twitter said, however, that they will not to show the content the users saw, because those accounts have already been suspended, and so that content is no longer available.
The company said it is working on a variety of new methods to prevent similar abuse in the future. The company said it will invest in new machine learning technology, verify major party candidates in elections across the country, and open lines of communication with election officials.
It was revealed today that Russian bots had played a significant role in getting the “ReleaseTheMemo” hashtag to trend on Twitter. The hashtag references a memo that conservative lawmakers have been calling on congressional leaders to release. It details, they say abuses by government officials of FISA. The memo is considered to be discrediting of the ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.