Score another one for Russian interests and their ability to use our social media platforms against us.
This time, we're learing how they used Twitter during the U.S. presidential election in 2016.
The primary target? Those who followed mainstream media accounts on the platform.
The amount spent to promote tweets? A total of $274,100, which is nearly three times the amount (that we know about) spent by Russian interests on Facebook.
Did you see this plot twist coming?
The backstory on the Russia linked Twitter campaign
Have you ever heard of Russia Today?
Maybe not, because it changed its name to "RT" to avoid scaring off readers. The news outlet's website puts it this way: "RT is the first Russian 24/7 English-language news channel which brings the Russian view on global news."
Twitter says Russia Today, "RT", operated several public Twitter handles during the presidential election: "In that year, the @RT_com, @RT_America, and @ActualidadRT accounts promoted 1,823 Tweets that definitely or potentially targeted the U.S. market. These campaigns were directed at followers of mainstream media and primarily promoted RT Tweets regarding news stories."
U.S. intelligence agencies call RT "the Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet." This, from a declasified version of the report on Russian interference in the U.S. election.
The news outlet's views spread far and wide, and its message was focused, according to the U.S. report, which lists prominent examples:
"On 6 August, RT published an English language video called 'Julian Assange Special: Do WikiLeaks Have the E-mail That’ll Put Clinton in Prison?' and an exclusive interview with Assange entitled 'Clinton and ISIS Funded by the Same Money.' RT’s most popular video on Secretary Clinton, 'How 100% of the Clintons’ ‘Charity’ Went to…Themselves,' had more than 9 million views on social media platforms. RT’s most popular English language video about the President-elect, called 'Trump Will Not Be Permitted To Win,' featured Assange and had 2.2 million views."
Twitter using Machine Learning to detect bots, automated accounts
While RT tweets appear to be human generated, Twitter admits it's trying to scale up efforts to deal with bots and automated scripting:
"The most effective way to fight suspicious bots is stopping them before they start. To do this, we’ve built systems to identify suspicious attempts to log in to Twitter, including signs that a login may be automated or scripted. These techniques now help us catch about 450,000 suspicious logins per day. Importantly, much of this defensive work is done through machine learning and automated processes on our back end, and we have been able to significantly improve our automatic spam and bot-detection tools, resulting in a 64% year-over-year increase in suspicious logins we’re able to detect."
Twitter challenged by traffic origin, what's real and what's not
"We’re investing in systems to stop bad content at its source if its point of origin corresponds with a known bad actor. However, the use of proxy servers, VPNs, and other forms of authentication, especially outside of the United States, may obscure the true origin of traffic on Twitter. We are working on better identifying the true origins of traffic and blocking activity from suspicious sources."
Twitter analyzed ads Facebook said to be Russian linked
All of this new information was posted on Twitter's blog on September 28, 2017, the same day a Twitter executive testified behind closed doors to a Congressional committee. And this was just days after Facebook handed over hundreds of ads to Congressional investigators.
Twiter says it has analyzed those ads. "Of the roughly 450 accounts that Facebook recently shared as a part of their review, we concluded that 22 had corresponding accounts on Twitter."
And then Twitter detected 179 related or linked accounts to those original 22. At this point, Twitter does not believe these accounts were used in any paid campaign.
This whole thing reminds us of the SecureWorld interview with the former Director of U.S. Cyber Command, Major General (Ret.) Brett Williams.
You can watch his brief interview here, or look for it on Twitter.
We'll tweet this story, of course.
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