News Technology

Twitter Suspends More Than 1,000 Accounts Allegedly Linked to Russian IRA Agency

Twitter has suspended 1,062 accounts that were allegedly linked to the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) and shared information meant to meddle with the 2016 US presidential election.

In a press release, the company announced about the suspension of these accounts.

“We have identified an additional 1,062 accounts associated with the IRA,” the release said on Friday.

Twitter said these accounts were linked to “a number of accounts that were potentially connected to a propaganda effort by a Russian government-linked organization known as the Internet Research Agency.”

The company also announced that it will send email notifications to 677,775 people in the U.S. that followed, retweeted or liked a post from the suspended accounts during the presidential campaign.

In the press release, Twitter shared some examples of the tweets coming from suspicious accounts.

“Cops have killed 68 people in 22 days since #Kaepernick started protesting. 68 in 22 days… have no words #KeithLamontScott,” one tweet read.

Last October, Twitter had revealed about finding 2,752 IRA-linked accounts.

Twitter’s general counsel also told the US Senate Intelligence Committee that nearly 0.0001 percent of all Twitter accounts are linked to Russia and have election-related content.

“In total, during the time period we investigated, the 3,814 identified IRA-linked accounts posted 175,993 Tweets, approximately 8.4% of which were election-related,” Twitter said.

Twitter said it believed that automated election-linked activity on some accounts was coming allegedly from Russia.  According to the micro-blogging site, 50,258 Russian-related accounts were posting message on the presidential vote during the US electoral period.