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Twitter Notifies 1.4 Million Users of Interaction With Russian Accounts (recode.net)

Posted by BeauHD on from the heads-up dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Recode: At least 1.4 million people on Twitter engaged with content created by Russian trolls during the 2016 presidential election, the company revealed on Wednesday. That's more than double the amount that Twitter initially identified -- and perhaps still just a fraction of the full universe of users who may have witnessed Kremlin propaganda over that period. In announcing the new data in a blog post, Twitter also said it had notified all 1.4 million affected users that they saw election disinformation. That fulfilled a pledge that the company previously made to members of Congress who are investigating Russia's tactics on social media. Notified users included those that followed one of the roughly 3,000 accounts belonging to the Internet Research Agency, the troll army tied to the Russian government, as well as users who retweeted, replied, liked or mentioned those IRA accounts in their tweets. But Twitter did not alert users who merely saw Russian troll tweets in their feeds but did not interact with the content. Nor did it reach out to users who saw tweets from the roughly 50,000 Russian bots that tweeted election-related content around November 2016.

8 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. While you were distracted by Nunes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Trump refused to implement the sanctions law, claiming the mere threat of sanctions was working.
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-sanctions/trump-administration-holds-off-on-new-russia-sanctions-despite-law-idUSKBN1FI2V7

    However his CIA chief says Russia has not let up attacking the USA and expects Russia to interfere in the US Midterm elections:
    http://time.com/5124313/cia-mike-pompeo-russia-midterm-elections/

    Republicans should clean house, Nunes is blowing a smoke screen to hide Russian attacks on the US elections, and you can't have the Republican head of the Intelligence oversight committee giving cover for a *foreign* intelligence agency to attack the US.

  2. We need examples of the elleged Russian action by bogaboga · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When it comes to trolling, I will be most grateful if anyone presents clear-cut example(s) of what Russians are alleged to have exposed to us.

    I have a feeling it's not that different when compared to what the US agencies do themselves.

    So folks, spit out some examples.

    1. Re:We need examples of the elleged Russian action by ganjadude · · Score: 4, Insightful

      exactly. i mean, if they are pushing truth and not lies, shouldnt we be more upset with our own government for lying to us??

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    2. Re: We need examples of the elleged Russian action by bsDaemon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The best I can figure is, they leveraged two pillars of a free society: freedom of press and freedom of speech, by posting on open social media platforms and buying ads. Some people donâ(TM)t like the outcome and refuse to accept that after 30+ years of dealing with Clintons in the political spotlight, enough people in strategically important locations were sick of it to not vote for her. It must have been a few months of social media lies by Russians!

      The burried lead here is essentially that Democrats are insisting that Trump voters are easily misled idiots incapable of rational thought. BUT if they had believed different social media bias and voted for Clinton, then they would obviously be independent thinkers.

      I didnâ(TM)t vote for Trump. I think heâ(TM)s crass and shallow. But I didnâ(TM)t vote for Hillary because I donâ(TM)t want her to be president either. I will also say this much: I have no appreciation for those who say âoeif you donâ(TM)t agree with me you are an easily duped idiot who made up his mind because of a tweet.â

    3. Re:We need examples of the elleged Russian action by burtosis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      exactly. i mean, if they are pushing truth and not lies, shouldnt we be more upset with our own government for lying to us??

      Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you trying to say that maybe we should focus on what's actually important, affecting us daily, and under our control?!? Good, because I'm pretty sure the answer is in her goddamn emails.

  3. Re:We need examples of the alleged Russian action by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There was a claim, [possibly made by Vlado himself,] that many of the Russian IPv4's interacting with Twitter traffic were due to TOR exit servers based in Russia.

    So we are back to a verifiable {micro-sized airborne particles of combustion origin and planar reflective surfaces} situation

  4. Re:Who they were targetting by Green+Mountain+Bot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is mostly true. Their primary objective was definitely to divide the populace and undermine liberal democracy, and they went so far as to organize opposing protests in adjacent locations. But it isn't true that they didn't care who won. They definitely preferred for Trump to win - they just assumed that there was no way US voters would be that stupid, and focused on undermining the legitimacy of the system as a whole. But as Mencken said, "Americans are dumber than horse shit." (That is the quote, right?) And here we are.

  5. Re:Right about 1%.... by Narcocide · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Traitors.