Twitter has informed Congress that it removed roughly 200 accounts from its service after determining they were linked to Russia and sought to interfere in American politics.
“Of the roughly 450 accounts that Facebook recently shared as a part of their review, we concluded that 22 had corresponding accounts on Twitter. All of those identified accounts had already been or immediately were suspended from Twitter for breaking our rules,” Twitter announced in a blog post Thursday afternoon. “In addition, from those accounts we found an additional 179 related or linked accounts, and took action on the ones we found in violation of our rules.”
The social media company met with the Senate and House intelligence committees on Thursday amid the ongoing congressional investigations into Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential campaign, including through social media..
In that meeting, Twitter representatives informed congressional staff that they had shut down the 200 accounts after connecting them to Facebook accounts that had been suspended because they were linked to a Russian troll farm.
As with the Facebook accounts, the Twitter accounts sought to amplify political discord by highlighting hot-button political issues like race and immigration.
Some of the tweets from these accounts promoted anti-Hillary Clinton stories, a source with knowledge of the matter said. The US intelligence community believes one reason Russia meddled in the election was to damage Clinton’s chances of winning.
Twitter has not provided details about the accounts, but research from independent groups monitoring Twitter provides some insight into how Russian-linked accounts used the social media platform in an attempt to amplify America’s political divisions.
The Alliance for Securing Democracy, an initiative by the public policy group German Marshall Fund, has an ongoing review of 600 Twitter accounts linked to Russia and seeking to influence U.S. politics. In the last week, the group says, one-quarter of the stories promoted by those accounts had a strong anti-American theme, while roughly 15% were anti-Hillary Clinton.
Those findings are largely consistent with what Facebook has disclosed to Congress about the Facebook ads bought by Russian-backed accounts.
On Wednesday, CNN reported that at least one of those Facebook ads referenced Black Lives Matter and was specifically targeted to reach audiences in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore.
Ferguson and Baltimore had gained widespread attention for the large and at times violent protests over police shootings of black men. The decision to target the ad in those two cities offers a look into how Russians used geographically targeted advertising in its effort to sow political chaos in the United States.