You might want to be more mindful about what you retweet on the topic of your favorite political candidate or issue.
Twitter has just released 10 million tweets, GIFs, videos, photos, and live content from 3,841 accounts linked to trolls from the Russian-backed Internet Research Agency, along with 770 other accounts thought to have originated in Iran.
It was not that long ago that the U.S. was enlightened to the massive extent that Russian-backed agents had used social media hoping to influence the American presidential election on Facebook and Twitter.
All the accounts and the Tweets which stretch back to 2016, have one thing in common: Messing with the minds of Americans deciding who they will elect to office.
The release will allow greater insight into just what sort of tactics were, and still, are being used to influence elections
Writing in a blog post, Twitter’s head of legal, policy and trust & safety Vijaya Gadde and the head of site integrity Yoel Roth said:
“In line with our strong principles of transparency and with the goal of improving understanding of foreign influence and misinformation campaigns, we are releasing the full, comprehensive archives of the Tweets and media that are connected with these two previously disclosed and potentially state-backed operations on our service.”
Advertiser Concerns
For Twitter, the move is two-part: One is an effort to get ahead of the possible backlash from advertisers concerned with their ads ending up being associated with the wrong people.
The other reason for the release, according to co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, is to “enable independent academic research and investigation.”
We’re releasing all the accounts and related content associated with potential information operations we found on Twitter since 2016. We’re releasing substantially more information about them to enable independent academic research and investigation. https://t.co/BWkI5wOG4I
— jack (@jack) October 17, 2018
What’s Next?
Well, the use of social media by government’s looking to influence politics in other countries is not going to end says Gadde.
“It is clear that information operations and coordinated inauthentic behavior will not cease,” said Gadde. “These types of tactics have been around for far longer than Twitter has existed — they will adapt and change as the geopolitical terrain evolves worldwide and as new technologies emerge. For our part, we are committed to understanding how bad-faith actors use our services.”
