Washington - Twitter
said on Thursday it had suspended about 200
Russian-linked accounts as it probes online efforts to meddle
with the 2016 US election, but an influential Democratic
senator slammed its steps as insufficient.
Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate
Intelligence Committee, summoned Twitter officials to testify
behind closed doors on Thursday as part of broad investigation
of Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election. Facebook
faced a similar grilling earlier this month.
Lawmakers in both parties suspect social networks may have
played a big role in Moscow's attempts to spread propaganda, sow
political discord in the United States and help elect President
Donald Trump. Moscow denies any such activity, and Trump has
denied any collusion.
Twitter also briefed the House of Representatives
Intelligence Committee on Thursday.
Warner said Twitter officials had not answered many
questions about Russian use of the platform and that it was
still subject to foreign manipulation.
The company's presentation to the Intelligence Committee
"showed an enormous lack of understanding from the Twitter team
of how serious this issue is," Warner said. He took particular
umbrage at what he said was Twitter's decision to largely
confine its review to accounts linked to fake profiles already
spotted by Facebook.
Twitter said it had identified and removed 22 accounts
directly linked to about 500 fake Facebook pages or profiles
tied to Russia and that it unearthed an additional 179 accounts
that were otherwise related.
Twitter declined to comment when asked about Warner's
comments.
In addition to the private testimony by its officials, the
company published a public blog post on Thursday with its most
detailed discussion to date of the steps it was taking to combat
propaganda.
Warner in remarks to reporters called Twitter's statements
"deeply disappointing" and "inadequate on almost every level."
The comments signalled that the congressional investigations
into Russia's use of social media platforms would not ease up.
Twitter, Facebook and other Internet companies including
Alphabet Inc's Google are facing a steady stream of
criticism as more information emerges about manipulation of
their platforms during the 2016 election campaign.
Users, lawmakers and technology analysts have long
criticised Twitter as too lax in policing fake or abusive
accounts. Unlike Facebook, Twitter allows both anonymous
accounts and automated accounts, or bots, making it far more
difficult to police the service.
On Thursday, researchers at Oxford University published a
study concluding that Twitter bots disseminated misinformation
and propaganda at a higher rate in US battleground states than
in non-competitive states during a 10-day period around Election
Day in November.
San Francisco-based Twitter said Russian media outlet Russia
Today, which is close to the Kremlin, had spent $274,100 on
Twitter advertisements and promoted 1,823 tweets potentially
aimed at the US market.
Those ad buys alone topped the $100,000 that Facebook this
month linked to a Russian propaganda operation during the 2016
election cycle, a revelation that prompted calls from some
Democrats for new disclosure rules for online political ads.
The editor-in-chief of Kremlin-backed media outlet RT said on Friday its purchase of advertisements on Twitter was standard commercial practice that was being falsely presented as Russian meddling in US affairs, RIA news agency reported.
"Twitter has revealed some monstrous information in Congress: we spent money on our ad campaigns. Just as all the usual media organisations in the world do," RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan was quoted as saying by the RIA news agency.
"Now we have to go even further and admit sincerely: we spent on ads in airports, taxis, on billboards, the internet, TV and radio as well. Our commercials were even broadcast on CNN," she said.
"Somehow it did not occur to us that, in a developed democracy, regular media advertising could turn out to be a suspicious and harmful activity," Simonyan said.