Skip to main content

The context you need, when you need it

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters — and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our own.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

Join now

Twitter admits there were many more Russian trolls on its site during the 2016 U.S. presidential election

Congress isn’t going to be happy.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey onstage at the New York Times DealBook conference
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey onstage at the New York Times DealBook conference
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey
Michael Cohen/Getty Images for The New York Times

Twitter revealed on Friday that trolls tied to the Russian government spread far more disinformation during the 2016 U.S. presidential election than the company first reported — and it pledged to notify hundreds of thousands of users who had seen that content.

The update comes as Twitter continues to face criticism on Capitol Hill that it has failed to fully confront the scourge of Kremlin propaganda — and neglected to respond to the earlier demands of lawmakers who are probing Russia’s meddling on popular social media sites.

Ahead of a series of congressional hearings last year, Twitter initially said it had discovered 2,200 accounts tied to the Internet Research Agency, a troll army connected to the Russian government. On Friday, though, Twitter said it had actually identified 3,814 accounts related to the IRA.

Also last year, Twitter calculated that there were roughly 36,000 bots originating out of Russia — and tweeting about the election — as Americans headed to the ballot box. By Friday, though, Twitter said it had found an additional 13,000 bots, bringing the total tally of automated accounts tweeting about the presidential race to more than 50,000.

And Twitter revealed for the first time on Friday that Russian propaganda — content that sought to stir social and political unrest in the United States — reached scores of its users. The company said it would notify 677,000 people in the United States who had followed one of these suspect accounts, or retweeted or liked their content. Twitter said it would do so by email.

In announcing its findings, Twitter sought to stress that Russian disinformation only amounted to a small portion of the tweets shared regularly on its platform. And it reiterated that it had taken steps to prevent such abuse as another election — a 2018 race to determine the composition of Congress — fast approaches. That includes a series of previously announced changes to the way it displays political ads.

But the news is sure to infuriate some federal lawmakers, who repeatedly have needled Twitter during the course of their investigation into Russian influence.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, for one, blasted Twitter in September for a “deeply disappointing” response to his questions about the election. When the company later appeared with its tech peers, Facebook and Google, at a series of congressional hearings on the issue, lawmakers from both parties demanded that Twitter take more aggressive steps to prevent such manipulation of its platform in the future.

This year, the company completely blew a deadline by which it was supposed to respond to written questions it was sent by congressional investigators. And for months, Twitter had ignored public demands by lawmakers like Sen. Richard Blumenthal that it notify users who had seen or interacted with such Russian propaganda. Only this week did Twitter finally acknowledge that it would take that step.

Warner, for his part, still offered some limited praise late Friday:

Blumenthal, meanwhile, cheered Twitter’s belated decision to notify users who had seen content generated by Russian trolls. But the Democratic senator still said he’d keep watch to ensure that Twitter actually adopts “measures to implement safeguards to protect users from the ongoing and real-time influence of Russian bots.”

Nevertheless, Twitter announced its latest findings at a busy moment: The company published its blog post at 5 pm on a Friday, while the U.S. Congress barreled at the time toward a potential government shutdown.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

More in Technology

Technology
The case for AI realismThe case for AI realism
Technology

AI isn’t going to be the end of the world — no matter what this documentary sometimes argues.

By Shayna Korol
Politics
OpenAI’s oddly socialist, wildly hypocritical new economic agendaOpenAI’s oddly socialist, wildly hypocritical new economic agenda
Politics

The AI company released a set of highly progressive policy ideas. There’s just one small problem.

By Eric Levitz
Future Perfect
Human bodies aren’t ready to travel to Mars. Space medicine can help.Human bodies aren’t ready to travel to Mars. Space medicine can help.
Future Perfect

Protecting astronauts in space — and maybe even Mars — will help transform health on Earth.

By Shayna Korol
Podcasts
The importance of space toilets, explainedThe importance of space toilets, explained
Podcast
Podcasts

Houston, we have a plumbing problem.

By Peter Balonon-Rosen and Sean Rameswaram
Technology
What happened when they installed ChatGPT on a nuclear supercomputerWhat happened when they installed ChatGPT on a nuclear supercomputer
Technology

How they’re using AI at the lab that created the atom bomb.

By Joshua Keating
Future Perfect
Humanity’s return to the moon is a deeply religious missionHumanity’s return to the moon is a deeply religious mission
Future Perfect

Space barons like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk don’t seem religious. But their quest to colonize outer space is.

By Sigal Samuel