Twitter couldn’t drop the ball any harder this year if it tried. Death threats, continual harassment and now this. By all indications, the company has taken a half-hearted, if not careless approach to dealing with its unfortunate role in the information wars enveloping it and most of social media.
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Although Twitter has stood with users against intrusive government surveillance — severing the access of social media monitoring companies targeting black activists and combating law enforcement subpoenas that threaten to undermine freedom of speech — the same level of concern has not been evident for US voters with regards to election interference.
At a press conference on Thursday to announce the Honest Ads Act, US senator Amy Klobucher put it bluntly: “Election security is national security,” she said.
Massive bots networks have turned Twitter into an effective propaganda weapon targeting elections the world over — attempts to surreptitiously manipulate domestic and foreign policy on a global scale.
These instances might be commonly called “conspiracy theories” or “fake news”, but in rooms where spymasters and military commanders convene, phrases like “information operations”, “influence activities” or “disrupt and corrupt” are more aptly applied.
Weeks ago, Twitter’s assistance in identifying propaganda targeting US voters during the 2016 election was described as “inadequate on almost every level,” by Sen. Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
In total, Twitter identified less than two dozen accounts linked to fake Facebook pages, which Facebook has described as the work of a Russian propaganda outfit with close Kremlin ties.
A Daily Beast report Friday details how Twitter also turned over a list of tweets that RT News, which is funded by the Russian government, had paid to promote to US viewers.
While the US intelligence community considers RT News one of Moscow’s most effective propaganda tools — an allegation the network vehemently denies — a list of ads promoted by the outlet and a handful of accounts with ties to fake Facebook pages cannot possibly reflect the full extent of the misinformation campaign.
According to a recent report, the St. Petersburg outfit primarily responsible, widely known as the “Internet Research Agency,” operating on an annual budget of nearly $US1 ($1) million and had as many as 90 people working at its US desk.
Since hearing Sen. Warner’s displeasure spoken openly, Twitter has promised to try harder and dig deeper, according to a source with knowledge of the discussions. More recently, the Virginia senator been heard saying something more to the effect of “we’ll see what Twitter comes back with”, the source said. But following a report that Twitter deleted a significant amount of data pertaining to Russian bots — the result of a longstanding privacy policy regarding self-terminated accounts — it’s difficult to say now whether Twitter’s belated effort will produce anything useful.
Twitter’s lackadaisical approach to the problem is perhaps exemplified best by a report Warner referenced yesterday while introducing legislation to regulate online political ads: A Twitter account that falsely represented itself as the Tennessee Republican Party has now been linked to the Internet Research Agency.
BuzzFeed learned this week that Twitter failed to suspend the account for 11 months, despite the repeated warnings of GOP officials.
The fake Republican account was widely cited by US news outlets and its signal was frequently boosted by Trump campaign officials, demonstrating what a supremely effective tool Twitter can be in the ratfucking toolbox.
These reports couldn’t come at a worse time for Twitter, as it is very publicly struggling to overcome biting criticisms over its handling (or rather, not handling) of hate-fuelled accounts spewing constant threats of death and rape — overwhelmingly at women and people of colour.
On the security front, however, as elections loom in the US and carry on worldwide, you can expect resentment to intensify over state-funded efforts to covertly manipulate foreign electorates.
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment for this story.