Twitter Joins the Fight to Shut Down Accounts Connected to Russian Election Interference

Social media outlets have begun the process of scouring their site accounts and purging the Russian bots.

Facebook’s efforts have been in the news for several weeks. Now it’s Twitter’s turn to clean out the egg people.

Advertisement

On Thursday, Twitter announced that it had found 201 accounts that were linked back to potential Russian interference in in the 2016 election.

Speaking of Facebook, 22 of those 201 Twitter accounts were connected to Facebook accounts that had been determined to be from Russian entities, inserting themselves into the election cycle.

Twitter said that of the remaining 179 accounts, it “took action on the ones we found in violation of our rules.”

None of the 201 accounts were registered as advertisers on Twitter, according to the company.

Twitter also shared that Russia Today, a Russian propaganda news outlet that distributes content in the U.S. and other countries, had used the platform to buy advertisements targeted to U.S. markets in 2016.  Three RT accounts, @RT_com, @RT_America, and @ActualidadRT, purchased $274,100 ads on Twitter.

The money was distributed among 1,823 promoted tweets, targeting followers of mainstream media.

Twitter officials met with both the Senate Intelligence Committee, as well as the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday to discuss what they’d found, in regards to foreign players attempting to infiltrate America’s election proceedings.

Advertisement

On Thursday, the Senate Intelligence Committee invited Twitter and Google to testify at a public hearing over Russian interference on November 1 sources with knowledge of the matter told The Hill. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that the social media giant was also invited.

The House is set to hold a similar hearing and wants all three companies to testify there as well, according to a Congressional aide. Both committees say that they want the companies to share more details publicly on the extent of foreign election influence that may have occurred on their platforms.

Twitter officials have vowed to continue the good fight against the egg people – automated accounts and spam.

In the meantime, if it comes at you with an egg profile image and a series of numbers after its name, posting in broken English, you know what you’re dealing with – and it’s probably not a real person, or at least, it’s not a person from the United States.

Recommended

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on RedState Videos