Earlier today, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced the company will no longer accept advertising from RT and Sputnik after determining they “attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government”:
Off-boarding advertising from all accounts owned by Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik.
We’re donating all projected earnings ($1.9mm) to support external research into the use of Twitter in elections, including use of malicious automation and misinformation. https://t.co/zIxfqqXCZr
— jack ??? (@jack) October 26, 2017
A little late, ‘eh? Also, RT’s editor-in-chief reminded everyone that it was Twitter that pursued the Russians ahead of the 2016 election:
editor-in-chief of RT says @jack pitched a Twitter-RT partnership for the 2016 election https://t.co/soUvMYTDtZ
— Michael B. Kelley (@MichaelBKelley) October 26, 2017
Here’s a screenshot of the alleged presentation by Twitter to RT:
Hope @jack won’t forget to tell @congressdotgov how @Twitter pitched @RT_com to spend big $$s on US elex ad campaign. pic.twitter.com/7GqoEoSaY8
— Маргарита Симоньян (@M_Simonyan) October 26, 2017
As they say, “BOOM”:
— John Schindler (@20committee) October 26, 2017
Russia throws @Jack and @Twitter under the bus. https://t.co/QFKaTC5gfV
— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) October 26, 2017
The plot thickens….#RussiaGate https://t.co/D3ygVq2ZPs
— Mark Sleboda (@MarkSleboda1) October 26, 2017
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Twitter will “donate” the RT and Sputnik funds to some sort of research project that looks at these sorts of things:
Twitter has also decided to take the $1.9 million we are projected to have earned from RT global advertising since they became an advertiser in 2011, which includes the $274,100 in 2016 U.S.-based advertising that we highlighted in our September 28 blog post, and donate those funds to support external research into the use of Twitter in civic engagement and elections, including use of malicious automation and misinformation, with an initial focus on elections and automation. We will have more details to share on this disbursement soon.
Related:
We’re committing to significantly increasing transparency for all ads on Twitter, especially political and issue ads: https://t.co/nyDvkIYazw
— jack ??? (@jack) October 24, 2017
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