Twitter Says Russian Bots Retweeted Trump 470,000 Times

[DonViejo]

Source: Bloomberg News




By Gerrit De Vynck and Selina Wang
January 26, 2018, 6:41 PM EST Updated on January 26, 2018, 7:13 PM EST

Russian-linked Twitter bots shared Donald Trump’s tweets almost half a million times during the final months of the 2016 election, Twitter Inc. said in a submission to Congress.

The automated accounts retweeted the Republican candidate’s @realDonaldTrump posts almost 470,000 times, accounting for just more than 4 percent of the re-tweets he received from Sept. 1 to Nov. 15, 2016. Hillary Clinton’s account got less than 50,000 retweets by the Russian-linked automated accounts during the same period of time, the company said in documents posted Friday by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The information further underscores how Russian-linked accounts sought to stir up discord during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Congress has been investigating exactly how social-media platforms like Twitter, Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube were manipulated during the election. The documents are Twitter’s response to follow-up questions from the Senate committee following an Oct. 31 hearing on the issue of Russian infiltration of the media platforms.

Twitter also found that Russian-linked accounts were responsible for 48 percent to 73 percent of the retweets of WikiLeaks’ Twitter accounts during the same time period. During the campaign WikiLeaks published emails from hacked Democratic party servers.

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-26/twitter-says-russian-linked-bots-retweeted-trump-470-000-times

[Stryst]

1. Maybe the same rules that apply to crack houses should apply here;

If you allow illegal activity to happen on your property, you have committed a crime and loose that property.

[BigmanPigman]

2. Sounds fair to me! Everyone should watch this video.

http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/facebook-employees-trump-office/4784/

[mr_lebowski]

3. Unfortunately, retweets are free so while 'incriminating' in a sense, don't amount to much ...

legally speaking.

OTOH, the taking out of paid advertisements, as almost certainly happened on Facebook and perhaps Google ... gets into the arena of violating campaign finance, taking money/gifts from foreign powers, etc.

I still think that Server at Trump Tower that they got the FISA warrant for, that showed activity with both Alfa Bank and Cambridge Analytica (iirc) ... is going to turn out to be the smoking gun that PROVES the criminal conspiracy.