'Massive Twitter data release sheds light on Russia’s Trump strategy'
Few will be surprised to learn that the 'troll farm' is still busy.Twitter on Wednesday released a trove of 10 million tweets it says represents the full scope of foreign influence operations on the platform dating back nearly a decade — including Russia's consistent efforts to disparage Hillary Clinton and an initially erratic approach to Donald Trump that eventually settled on a concerted pro-Trump message during the 2016 campaign.
The huge data cache consists of tweets from some 3,400 accounts tied to the Kremlin troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency and 770 others linked to Iran. It also includes some 2 million GIFs, videos and other pieces of visual content. Twitter said it's making the information available to "enable independent academic research and investigation," according to a company blog post.
The Russian tweets around the 2016 presidential election showed distinct patterns when it came to Clinton and Trump, according to researchers at the nonpartisan Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, which has been scouring the data since late last week.
While the Clinton animus was clear from the start, it took the IRA awhile to settle on its Trump strategy, as the Republican primary played out.
'Russian charged with conspiring to interfere in U.S. congressional elections'
The U.S. government on Friday charged a Russian national with playing a key financial role in a Kremlin-backed plan to conduct “information warfare” against the United States, including ongoing attempts to influence next month’s congressional elections.
Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, became the first person charged with a crime for attempting to interfere in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, according to a government official with knowledge of the investigation.
Khusyaynova was the chief accountant for Project Lakhta, an operation started in 2014 and financed by a Russian oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and two companies he controls, according to a criminal complaint.
The oligarch, Evgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, and his two companies were indicted in February in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s separate investigation of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to boost eventual winner Donald Trump over his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
The case against Khusyaynova was unsealed on the same day that U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies issued a warning about attempts by Russia, China, Iran and other foreign entities to interfere with Nov. 6 congressional elections, in which Trump’s Republicans are trying to maintain majority power in Congress, and national elections in 2020.