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Twitter reveals Russia-backed ads ahead of US election

“We have not found accounts associated with this activity to have obvious Russian origin, but some of the accounts appear to have been automated,” the statement said.

“We have shared examples of the content of these removed tweets with congressional investigators.”

Earlier this month, Facebook said it would turn over data on some 3,000 ads purchased by a Russian entity that appeared to inflame political divisions during the campaign. Some $100,000 was spent on the Facebook ads.

Democratic Senator Mark Warner called Twitter’s presentation “deeply disappointing” and “inadequate.”

Warner told reporters that the Twitter data was “basically derivative based on accounts that Facebook had identified (and) showed an enormous lack of understanding from the Twitter team of how serious this issue is, the threat it poses to democratic institutions, and again begs many more questions.”

– New research on ‘bots’ –

US lawmakers as well as a special prosecutor are investigating whether Russia interfered with the election or aided Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign.

A study released Thursday meanwhile found the campaign to spread “junk news” during the 2016 presidential election via Twitter appeared to target key states that were the most contested.

The research paper by the Oxford University Project on Computational Propaganda suggested a sophisticated effort to spread disinformation using automated accounts, or “bots.”

The researchers said that in the days leading up to the election, “Twitter users got more misinformation, polarizing and conspiratorial content than professionally produced news.”

But in swing states, “average levels of misinformation were higher,” even when weighted for the relative size of the state.

The study is just the latest to highlight the role of a disinformation campaign, widely believed to have been directed from Russia, to influence the election and help Trump while hurting his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

The Oxford researchers said the latest analysis suggests “strategically disseminated polarizing information” during the campaign.

A Twitter statement questioned the accuracy of the study, saying that research conducted by third parties about the impact of bots and misinformation on Twitter “is almost always inaccurate and methodologically flawed.”

One of the reasons for the inaccuracy, Twitter said, is that just two percent of all tweets contain geolocation data.

 

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