Twitter Updates Number of Russian Bot Accounts to Over 50,000

Twitter has continued to investigate and analyze automated accounts that were attempting to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. They have just announced additional findings where they have identified even more accounts that were apparently used by the Russians to distribute content intended to manipulate the election — over 50,000 of them.

Twitter identified and then suspended many user accounts that were likely connected to propaganda efforts on the part of a Russian government-linked organization known as the “Internet Research Agency” or “IRA”.

They also notified real users of the bot accounts’ activities:

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. Because we have already suspended these accounts, the relevant content on Twitter is no longer publicly available.

The Washington Post reported that Russian-backed fake accounts have continued to attempt to manipulate the American populace post-election:

As the effort lead by some Republicans to curtail special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into the election meddling has heated up, Russian-linked accounts helped amplify a Twitter hashtag calling for the release of a memo the group hopes will help discredit Mueller’s work, according to Hamilton 68, a research firm that tracks the malicious accounts. The #releasethememo hashtag was tweeted by these accounts nearly 4,000 times in the last couple of days, the firm said.

The accounts preyed upon conservative-minded individuals who were particularly open to the content of the messages which played directly into preconceived notions and prejudices. Multiple United States intelligence agencies investigated and found that Russia had conducted a sophisticated program aimed at influencing the outcome of the presidential election, and which included distributing engineered propaganda and anger-inducing reports on social media regarding lightning-rod subjects like police violence, Black Lives Matter, Islamic rights, and military veterans’ issues, as well as the hacking of Democrat National Committee email servers to further polarize the nation.

Various Tweets that Twitter exposed that were content promoted by the IRA accounts illustrate the types of content spread by the Russian propaganda machinery:

Tweet about Bill Clinton and Trump from the Presidential Election – example of Russian bot Tweets from fake accounts.

Tweet from Russian bot account urges FBI Director Comey to resign.

The scope of the full depth of Russian-generated postings has probably still not been fully plumbed. Analysts report that many copies of the identified propagandistic media continue to be visible on many accounts throughout Twitter, probably copied and reproduced by real users.