Twitter to inform users exposed to content from Russian accounts

Twitter said on Wednesday that it would let users know if they had been exposed to Russian accounts attempting to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Twitter’s director of public policy, Carlos Monje, told Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing that Twitter is in the process of working to identify and “individually inform” users who had come in contact with Kremlin-linked accounts.

“We will be rolling out our response shortly,” Monje told Blumenthal.

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Monje said the notifications would be limited to accounts created by the Internet Research Agency, one of the Russian “troll farms” responsible for creating and disseminating content aimed at influencing the election and sparking social divisions in the U.S.

Facebook has already released a tool to let users know if they have liked or followed pages created by the Internet Research Agency after Blumenthal asked Facebook, Twitter and Google to do so.

The Connecticut senator criticized Google for not taking action like Twitter and Facebook after it gave him a written response saying its platform is too complicated to be able to identify and provide such information.

“I’m disappointed by Google’s response,” Blumenthal said. “It essentially blew off my concerns.”

Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, tweeted his approval of Twitter’s announcement on Tuesday.

“After months of pushing Twitter to do the right thing, I’m encouraged the company will soon notify users who saw content from Kremlin-backed trolls,” Warner wrote. 

Warner has been one of the most vocal critics of tech firms efforts’ to counter foreign manipulation of their platforms.