San Francisco Jan 20 (IANS) Twitter has identified an additional 1 062 accounts associated with the Russia-backed Internet Research Agency (IRA) accused of interfering with the 2016 US presidential election.
This brings IRA-linked accounts to a total of 3 814 that posted 175 993 tweets approximately 8.4 per cent of which were election-related the micro-blogging platform said in a blog post on Saturday.
"We are emailing notifications to 677 775 people in the US who followed one of these accounts or retweeted or liked a Tweet from these accounts during the election period " Twitter said adding that it has already suspended these accounts.
Twitter has told a US Senate committee that the micro-blogging platform is working towards alerting its users who may have seen Kremlin-linked advertisements during the 2016 election.
Appearing before the US Commerce Science and Technology Committee this week Carlos Monje Twitter s Director of US Public Policy said Twitter would inform individually everyone who saw tweets from accounts linked to IRA.
Monje along with officials from Facebook and Google-owned YouTube testified before the committee about how Twitter is combating terror-related content on its platform.
"We have also provided Congress with the results of our supplemental analysis into activity believed to be automated election-related activity originating out of Russia during the election period " Twitter said.
Through its supplemental analysis Twitter has also identified 13 512 additional accounts for a total of 50 258 automated accounts that it identified as Russian-linked and tweeting election-related content during the election period.
"With our current capabilities we detect and block approximately 523 000 suspicious logins daily for being generated through automation " Twitter posted.
In December 2017 its systems identified and challenged more than 6.4 million suspicious accounts globally per week -- a 60 per cent increase in its detection rate from October 2017.
"We have developed new techniques for identifying malicious automation (such as near-instantaneous replies to tweets non-random Tweet timing and coordinated engagement) " the company said.
Since June 2017 Twitter has removed more than 220 000 applications in violation of its rules collectively responsible for more than 2.2 billion low-quality tweets.
In 2018 Twitter aims to invest further in machine-learning capabilities that help it detect and mitigate the effect on users of fake coordinated and automated account activity.
--IANS
na/qd
