Facebook, Twitter to aid inquiry on Russian meddling
Facebook and LONDON — Twitter have promised to cooperate with another set of investigations into suspicions of Russian meddling in elections this time in — Britain, over the bitterly divi- sive referendum last year in which the country voted to leave the European Union.
More than 150,000 Russian-language Twitter accounts posted tens of thousands of messages in English urging support for withdrawal, known as Brexit, in the days before the vote June 23, researchers have found, drawing parallels with Russian social media activity around the U.S. presiden- tial election later that year. Facebook has acknowl-
edged that more than 126 million users may have seen inflammatory political ads bought by a Russian company, the Internet Research Agency, during the U.S. campaign.
In a letter to the chairman of a British parliamentary committee, released Tues- day, Facebook promised to comply with a request for data “by the second week of December,” adding that its response would also be sent to the country’s official election watchdog, the Electoral Commission. Twitter made a similar promise to release material “in the coming weeks.”
Commi t tee Chairman Damian Collins, a Conservative lawmaker who leads the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, had written to Facebook’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, requesting that the social network share material similar to that given to congressional committees investigating Russian election meddling in the United States.
Collins told the BBC that the committee was investigating whether there was “systematic distribution of false news by, particularly Russian-backed, organizations,” and that he hoped the release of the information would give British lawmakers “a better chance to understand the scale of Russian-backed operations during the referendum.”
“We have a right to know what was going on,” Collins said. “Some of the activity took place directly before the referendum and certainly during the campaign — that’s why I wrote to Mark Zuckerberg asking him that Facebook should give us the information about Russian-backed activity on their platform.”
Earlier this month, Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, accused Russia of meddling in Western elections and planting fake stories in the media to “weaponize information” and sow discord. She did not make specific assertions in relation to British elections, however, or to the Brexit referendum, the outcome of which her government is in the process of implementing.
The “leave” side received 52 percent of ballots cast in the referendum, a winning margin of about 1.3 million votes.
Those inclined to suspect Russian interference in the campaign say that the EU’s economic sanctions on Russia for its intervention in Crimea — sanctions that Britain supports — may have given the Kremlin a strong interest in dividing the bloc.