NBC (Feb 2020) - Russian troll accounts purged by Twitter pushed Qanon and other conspiracy theories

[TomCADem]

While Trump and Republicans will claim that they had no idea that Russia has been pushing right wing Qanon conspiracies, it has been pretty well documented throughout this year that Russia has been spamming social media in support of Trump. There is a reason why the Trump administration has suspended Congressional election security briefings.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/russian-troll-accounts-purged-twitter-pushed-qanon-other-conspiracy-theories-n966091

A new batch of troll accounts identified by Twitter as having ties to Russia’s propaganda operation revealed an emphasis on promoting far-right conspiracy theories such as Qanon to Americans.

Twitter announced Thursday the removal of 418 accounts tied to the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency, the disinformation group whose employees were indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller last February for attempted election interference.

The accounts’ tweets featured the hashtag #MAGA, usually in support of President Donald Trump, almost 38,000 times — the most of any hashtag. #ReleaseTheMemo, a social media campaign pushed by allies of the president last year that aimed to discredit some members of the FBI, was tweeted 37,583 times.

In all, the 400-some accounts tweeted more than 900,000 tweets.

At the time, close allies of Trump brushed off suggestions that #ReleaseTheMemo, which trended on Twitter, was boosted by Russian influence. "Russian trolls have nothing to do with releasing the memo. That was a vote of the intelligence committee,” counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said last February.

[Sneederbunk]

1. Qanon Russia

Last edited Sat Sep 5, 2020, 08:39 PM - Edit history (1)