Russian Bot Trump Retweets Neared 500K During Campaign

In the calendar month leading up to the 2022 Presidential election, Russian Twitter bots retweeted Donald Trump'south tweets hundreds of thousands of times, Twitter revealed in a notation to Congress.

Equally was first reported past Bloomberg, Russian-linked automated Twitter accounts retweeted Trump's tweets 469,537 times from Sept. 1 through Nov. 15, 2022, Twitter wrote in the certificate, which was published Friday by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Tweets from Hillary Clinton's account received 47,846 retweets from Russian bots during the same fourth dimension catamenia.

In the note, Twitter said it identified 50,258 Russian-linked accounts on the platform that generated "automated, election-related content." Those accounts pumped out approximately 2.12 one thousand thousand election-related Tweets, which collectively received around 454.7 million impressions.

The company downplayed the touch on of this activity, noting that those 2.12 one thousand thousand tweets "constituted approximately one per centum of the overall election-related Tweets on Twitter at the time."

Critics, however, say Twitter has not done enough. Sen. Mark Warner, ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, for example, said a September presentation Twitter gave to lawmakers was "inadequate on most every level."

Twitter earlier this calendar month notified the more than 677,000 people in the US who liked, retweeted, or followed Russian-linked election-meddling accounts. Those accounts included @TEN_GOP, a Republican grouping in Tennessee that pushed pro-Donald Trump tweets, @Pamela_Moore13, a conservative personality, and @crystal1johnson, a black woman who was critical of Us police. None of the accounts were existent and Twitter has since suspended them.

About Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo is PCMag'due south expert on fitness and smart habitation products. Didactics yoga for nearly 10 years has helped her in evaluating a range of connected health products including fitness trackers, heart charge per unit monitors, rowers, smart scales, stationary bikes, force training machines, treadmills, and more than. Angela as well tests smart home devices from her ranch in Florida, including air purifiers, kitchen appliances, and robot vacuums, just to proper noun a few.