Russia’s ‘troll factory’ behind Twitter profiles
TWITTER HAS found 49 accounts on its social media network which are linked to a notorious Russian “troll factory” which was sending out messages about the EU referendum during the 2016 campaign.
The internet company’s UK head of public policy Nick Pickles told a House of Commons committee that the accounts linked to the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency amounted to less than 0.005 per cent of those tweeting about the referendum, and received “very low levels of engagement” from other users.
The announcement came in a hearing of the Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s inquiry into ‘fake news’ – taking evidence from internet companies YouTube, Facebook, Google and Twitter in Washington DC.
YouTube told the cross-party committee it had found no evidence of Russian sources using ads on its video-sharing service to attempt to interfere in the 2016 referendum.
Juniper Downs, YouTube’s global head of public policy, said that the company would be ready to help further investigations into possible Russian attempts to influence votes in Britain.
Meanwhile, Facebook said it had taken down “thousands” of fake accounts in the run-up to 2017 elections in the UK, France and Germany – although they were not necessarily aimed at spreading false information.
Mr Pickles told the committee that Twitter had identified “a very small number of suspected Internet Research Agency-linked accounts”.
“Forty-nine such accounts were active during the referendum campaign, which represents less than 0.005 per cent of the total number of accounts that tweeted about the referendum,” he said.
“Those accounts collectively posted 942 tweets, representing less than 0.02 per cent of the total tweets posted about the referendum during the campaign. Those tweets collectively were retweeted 461 times and liked 637 times.” This amounted to fewer than 10 likes and 13 retweets per account, which was “a very low level of engagement”, he said.
The cross-party panel of MPs was also using the trip across the Atlantic to meet senior senators who have been investigating allegations of Russian interference and collusion in the American presidential election won by Donald Trump.
YouTube has previously informed a US Senate committee of 18 channels it discovered which were linked to the Internet Research Agency “content farm”.
In September, Facebook bowed to pressure and provided the contents of 3,000 ads bought by a Russian agency to the US committee. Asked whether any similar searches could be undertaken in relation to UK elections, Ms Downs told the committee: “Absolutely, we are happy to cooperate with the UK Government’s investigations into whether there was any interference in elections in the UK.”
Facebook’s head of global policy management Monika Bickert told the MPs that it had a strict policy of people signing up using their real names and took action to tackle fake profiles.
Committee chairman Damian Collins last year criticised Facebook and Twitter over their replies to the committee’s investigation.
Google vice-president of news Richard Gingras acknowledged that so-called “fake news” was harmful to users and to society.