Skip to main content

Russian Troll Tweets Duped Global Media Thousands of Times




What do President Donald Trump, CNN anchor Jake Tapper, The Washington Post, Breitbart and Jack Dorsey, the head of Twitter, all have in common?
They and at least 40 celebrities and politicians were all roped into boosting tweets created by a Russian "troll factory" to millions of followers, according to a new exclusive analysis.
Over 3,000 global news outlets also inadvertently published articles containing embedded tweets by the confirmed Kremlin-linked troll accounts in over 11,000 news articles in the run-up to the 2016 election, separate exclusive reporting shows.
On Wednesday, the House Intelligence Committee publicly released for the first time the list of over 2,700 handles provided by Twitter that the social media platform linked to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian intelligence agency-linked firm based in St. Petersburg, Russia.
         
Exclusive to NBC News, the list of known IRA-linked handles published by the committee was cross-referenced against an archive of tweets by 855 politicians and public figures tracked by PolitiTweet, an online tool published by PolitiWatch, a nonprofit, nonpartisan technology and public accountability organization.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Glee actor Mark Salling admits child porn possession

Glee actor Mark Salling admits child porn possession Former Glee actor Mark Salling has pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography. Salling, 35, now faces between four and seven years in prison and has been ordered to pay about $50,000 (£38,000) to each victim. The actor was arrested in 2015 after a tip off he was in possession of images of children being sexually abused. Investigators eventually found thousands of images on his laptop and hard drive. Salling was charged with two counts of receiving and possessing images of child sexual abuse in May 2016, and faced a possible 20 years behind bars. But documents obtained by several outlets show he has entered into a plea deal with California's district attorney. As part of the agreement, Salling will be subject to 20 years supervised release and will have strict restrictions placed on his contact with under-18s, according to celebrity website TMZ. Salling played bad-boy football player Noah "Puck...

'Bully' Trump must RESIGN - Terrifying tweets could spark World War 3 with North Korea

'Bully' Trump must RESIGN - Terrifying tweets could spark World War 3 with North Korea World War 3 fears: Donald Trump's Twitter post could start war with North Korea DONALD Trump has been accused of acting like a “bully in the schoolyard” amid fears his war mongering tweets aimed at North Korea could spark World War 3. Tensions between North Korea and the US have reached a boiling point in recent months after Pyongyang conducted a series of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launches. The president threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea at the United Nations last month, prompting the reggae nation to threaten to test a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean. But now Donald Trump has further ramped up threats to Kim Jong-Un, after he tweeted on Saturday that "only one thing will work” when dealing with the hermit kingdom. Washington’s Democrat representative Pramila Jayapal expressed her deep concern about President Trump's lat...
The Crazy Way The Walking Dead Handled Morales' Story Last week's Walking Dead was capped off with the return of Atlanta survivor Morales, whose surprise reappearance was coupled with the shock that he was now within the ranks of Negan's Saviors. This week's episode cut Morales' return short, offering a small bit of explanation for his current situation before Daryl took him out of the land of the living for good. I imagine there will be a lot of irate fans expecting Morales to have had a bigger arc in the story. When Morales came back last week, I was mistaken in thinking that he had a full idea about who Rick was whenever his name would get spoken by the Saviors. It wasn't a very sensible assumption, since there would be little reason for that connection to happen in Morales' brain, considering not a whole lot of intel is at anyone's disposal in this society. So it was a much better move for him to not make the connections between Rick Grimes ...