Spreading fake news and propaganda these days is particularly easy due to the invention of social media, where such news can be easily spread at a click of a button. Social media platforms are working to cut through the noise and fake news, such as Facebook where they have launched tools and also notify users who might have followed fake Russian accounts.It turns out that Twitter is now doing something similar, and have announced that they will start notifying users who might have followed a Russian spam account. According to the company, “Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing notifications to 677,775 people in the United States who followed one of these accounts or retweeted or liked a Tweet from these accounts during the election period. Because we have already suspended these accounts, the relevant content on Twitter is no longer publicly available.”
For those unfamiliar, there are reports that suggest that Russian-backed group calling themselves the Internet Research Agency allegedly meddled in the 2016 election in the US, which some believe has led to the political climate today. Companies such as Google have also previously found evidence that Russian-linked ads were displayed across its services, such as Search, YouTube, and Gmail.
Twitter has also since announced that they will be taking more steps to prevent situations like this from happening again, such as addressing escalations, improve on their anti-spam technology, and also to monitor trends and spikes in conversations related to the 2018 elections.
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