Twitter exec says 'hundreds of thousands' of Russian disinformation accounts still active on Twitter

[Nevilledog]

https://weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p/twitter-exec-says-hundreds-of-thousands

Hidden in the middle of this week’s House Oversight Committee hearing was a startling admission from a former Twitter executive that has been overlooked by almost everyone. The hearing was focused on the ongoing Hunter Biden laptop saga, but the real revelation came during a brief exchange between Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of Trust and Safety, during which Roth confirmed that “thousands or hundreds of thousands” of Russian Twitter accounts targeting the U.S. are still active on the platform as part of an ongoing campaign.

Roth led the team at Twitter that uncovered Russia’s 2016 interference campaign targeting the U.S. presidential election — an experience he described in his written remarks on Wednesday.

“I still remember the rage I felt when I saw accounts with names like ‘Pamela Moore’ and ‘Crystal Johnson’ — accounts purporting to be real Americans, from Wisconsin and New York, but with phone numbers tracing back to St Petersburg, Russia,” Roth recounted. “These accounts were operated by agents of a foreign government, and their mission was to stoke culture war issues on social media to try to further divide Americans.”

He went on to describe the huge networks of Russian accounts that his team discovered and removed from the platform, using this as an example to demonstrate the national security implications of Twitter’s content moderation decisions.

“The kinds of attacks that we saw go far beyond fake Americans with Russian phone numbers. The actors targeting American elections are well-funded and increasingly sophisticated, and have continuously gotten better at covering their tracks,” Roth warned.

*snip*

[Kennah]

1. Probably all that's left

[NJCher]

2. And we know who happily

Leads the so called culture war dissent, too, don’t we?

It would be interesting to track what is being said from these accounts to what mtg, gaetz, etc are saying. Is there a coordinated message?

[NJCher]

3. I would also like to know

What effect Putin’s weakened position will have on his strategy on this front.

Economically, this is probably one of his least expensive investments.

There is the matter of morale and belief in his cause, which I have to think is not so strong.

[GenThePerservering]

4. Mush wants them all

since they're soon to be the only beings existing on his stupid platform. Twitter needs to die - the worthwhile people can reform on Mastodon - come on, people, it's possible.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

5. Elon Musk enables Putin.

[sybylla]

6. There were a surprising "namebunchanumbers" accounts yesterday...

commenting all over posts about the Lake Michigan/Lake Huron thing. Shouting about how weak we are, blah, blah, blah.

I really don't know why I thought Melon Husk and the few H1B slaves he has left would have had a better handle on that.

[durablend]

7. Elon Musk: "Sooooo what's the problem?"