Almost 700,000 Americans interacted with Russian trolls on Twitter

Can't say we didn't see this coming. Is anyone surprised? Time to shut this down, Europe already has a handle on it.

Twitter will inform nearly 700,000 people in the U.S. that they either followed a Kremlin-linked troll account, or retweeted or liked a tweet sent by one of the accounts, the social media company said Friday.

The company last year identified thousands of Twitter accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency, a Russian government-linked troll army in St. Petersburg that worked to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and to promote chaos and division in American society more generally.

"Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing notifications to 677,775 people in the United States who followed one of these accounts or retweeted or liked a Tweet from these accounts during the election period," Twitter said in a blog post announcing the move.

Twitter initially said it had found 200 accounts linked to the group. Then it told Congress last fall that it had identified 2,752 accounts linked to the group. On Friday, Twitter said it had since identified an additional 1,062 accounts, bringing the total to 3,814. The accounts together sent more than 175,000 tweets, the company said.

Related: The Kremlin-linked troll Twitter can't seem to shake

Twitter said it will hand over the details of the additional accounts to Congress.

The company also said it had also found more than 50,000 Russian-linked automated accounts that tweeted about the presidential election. Networks of automated accounts are often run from the same computer and sometimes post the same link, talking point or hashtag en-masse in an attempt to make it trend on the platform.

Among those getting emails will likely be some current and former members of the Trump administration, as well as a member of the Trump family.

White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway retweeted one of the IRA-linked accounts, @TEN_GOP, which was designed to look like it was run by the Tennessee Republican Party, just days before the 2016 election.

Donald Trump Jr. also followed the @TEN_GOP account, CNN found.

And former National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn, his son Michael Flynn Jr. and former deputy assistant to the president Sebastian Gorka all followed a separate IRA-linked account, a CNN analysis last year found. That account, which used the pseudonym "Jenna Abrams," developed a persona of a conservative American woman, and amassed a following of more than 70,000.

Related: Facebook now lets you check to see if you followed Russian propaganda

A copy of the email sent to one Twitter user after the blog post was published Friday obtained by CNN showed that Twitter informed the user they had interacted with one of the IRA-linked accounts, but did not say which account it was.

In December, Facebook launched a tool in its help section that allows users to see if they followed any Facebook or Instagram accounts run by the Internet Research Agency. Unlike Twitter, Facebook has not announced plans to inform users directly.

Both companies appeared to time these announcements for moments when they would get less attention than they might otherwise. Facebook made its announcement the Friday before Christmas; Twitter published its blog post on a Friday when the news media was focused on a possible government shutdown.

Twitter also said on Friday it was investing in technology to help "detect and mitigate the effect on users of fake, coordinated, and automated account activity."

Its efforts on that front have included some missteps. The fake "Jenna Abrams" persona that was followed by the Flynns and Gorka has twice since re-emerged on the platform using the same name. On both occasions Twitter did not take action against the new accounts until CNN reported their existence.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/19/media/twitter-internet-research-agency-accounts/index.html

 

But but but

There is no Russia!!,!

 

will the twitterverse be informed when they're interacting with communist troll sites like CNN, MSNBC, NYT, ABC, CBS, NBC, Washington Post, Media Matters, Daily Kos, Politifact, PoliticusUSA, Huffington Post, Occupy Democrats, etc?

 

Sure.

Cause Twitter said so.

Uh huh.

Let me guess, they hired Cloudstrike to help "investigate" right?

 

So you're trying to tell us, Twitter turned you into a mindless bot..................and your excuse for voting for Trump?

 

Well to be fair here if it wasn't for all of those leftist rags then Twitter would basically just be that small corner on the internet where celebrities fight with each other over who has the dumbest baby name.

 

Question for liberals: How many of you changed your vote because of a Tweet or Facebook ad?

 

they're not worried about themselves, no sir, they're too smart to be taken in by fake news....they're worried about those people they've deemed too stupid to obtain photo ID....their useful idiots, if you will.

 

What was it those Russian trolls said that made ohio iron worker change his mind?
That's pretty slick since 12 billion Hillary campaign dollars in ads couldn't swing two votes.

 

Wait...the left likes to tell us that Trump received a record number of votes from uneducated people. Only an uneducated person would switch their vote from Clinton to Trump because of a Tweet. Another leftist backfiring fail.

 

Donald Trump turned millions into mindless bots. The Russians just moved in and used the mindless Trumpbots to chain mail Trump propaganda to others.

 

Funny stuff, right there.

 

Because if those mindless bots had any brains they would have voted for the most scheming, duplicitous woman in history. And the scheming media and corrupt govt agencies would have continued in their path of underhandedness and illicit financial gains. Yeah, we were the fools.

 

I have to agree. I deal with Russian trolls everyday on PF.

 

A thread about Russian trolls and how effective they are....

 

We were interacting with Liberal trolls months up to the election. Then their account activity magically stopped when they lost.

 

Do you own a laundry?

 

Unbelievable

These right-wing PINHEADS simply don't have the brain power to differentiate between real news and fake news...

 

Is that a Russian stereotype?

 

You argument has always been that Russian Tweets out performed the multi billion, hyper liberal, 24/7 American media, that’s the Russian influence you’ve been clamoring about when you couldn’t find hacking, rigging and collusion, right?

 

Whats really funny is that they are going to do it again in November and there is nothing that can be done to stop them.

 

I guess it all depends.

But I'm going to take an intelligent guess that the vast majority of the 700,000 who followed and were indoctrinated by the Russians on Twitter weren't Republicans.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-is-for-conservatives/?utm_term=.f011588871cd

 

Was the report 9 members of a uranium company donating $150 million into the Clinton Foundation fake news or real news?

Was the fact Hillary went free after destroying 30,000 emails and multiple hard drives fakes news or real news?

Was it the youtube video that caused a planned attack on the U.S. base in Benghazi fake news or real news?

Was Seth Rich really robbed and then murdered as reported? They took nothing?

Was the IRS illegally denying conservative and Christian applicants non-profit status for more than a year (or not at all) fake news or real news? And how come Lois Lerner who with her staff destroyed five hard drives after they were subpoenaed by congress did not get charged? Fake or real?

Can you get an idea what we are up against? But I get it, your beloved media cannot be bothered with that, they heard someone said “sh-t hole” and Trump may have high cholesterol. Pardon us.

 

Trump family wants to wash some dirt off their money.

Is that a bio-suit you're wearing?