Twitter known forty 9 accounts crawl by a Russian troll factory in the end of Brexit

Vote scamper away supporters.REUTERS/Neil Hall

• Twitter has known accounts linked to a Russian troll factory that were full of life in the end of the UK’s Brexit vote in June 2016.
• The firm has consistently downplayed suggestions that Russian groups abused its platform to unfold untrue recordsdata all over the referendum.
• In an change to MPs on Thursday, Twitter talked about it came upon forty 9 accounts linked to Russian misinformation community the Internet Study Company.

Twitter has at closing known Russian accounts on its platform worn to unfold fraudulent recordsdata in the end of the UK’s Brexit vote in June 2016.

The firm talked about it had came upon forty 9 accounts linked to Russia’s Internet Study Company, which carries out on-line misinformation campaigns for the Russian authorities. These accounts posted 942 tweets collectively when it comes to Brexit, that web been retweeted 461 cases and « cherished » 637 cases.

Twitter talked about the tweets accounted for a limited zero.005% of accounts that posted concerning the UK referendum, and zero.02% of complete tweets concerning the vote in the end of the campaign.

« These are very low stages of engagement, » the firm wrote in a commentary.

Nick Pickles, Twitter’s senior UK policy supervisor, published the numbers in the end of an proof session held by British politicians within the US on Thursday. The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport desire out committee spent hours grilling tech executives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google concerning the unfold of misinformation on their platforms. It used to be the first committee hearing of its kind, taking situation out of doorways the UK.

While Twitter claims the numbers are low, its document on Russian accounts would now not entirely stack up with media and tutorial reports of smartly-liked Russian misinformation on Brexit.

A City College document known a thirteen,500-proper bot community that used to be marvelous full of life in the end of the Brexit referendum, then impulsively disappeared. Twitter later claimed a puny piece of the bot’s accounts were registered in Russia. A separate investigation by The Times came upon Russian accounts posting 45,000 tweets about Brexit within the home of Forty eight hours.

The academic see that has come closest to matching Twitter’s findings is one from the Oxford Internet Institute, which came upon one zero five accounts tweeting Sixteen,000 cases within the crawl-up to the referendum. 

And the firm has beforehand brushed apart the extra indecent findings, suggesting researches had known low-advantageous accounts that didn’t web powerful of an target audience. In a commentary on Thursday, Twitter repeated the Oxford see’s conclusion that « we came upon runt proof of hyperlinks to Russian sources. »

In Thursday’s hearing, Pickles talked about researchers usually misidentified bots. He talked about: « [We] quiz of us to endure in mind, when they invent assertions, there are conditions where these assertions are in accordance with full of life users who’re proper and now not bots. »

Earlier within the hearing, YouTube’s world policy chief Juniper Downs instructed politicians it had no proof that Russian groups had offered adverts when it comes to Brexit by its platform.