The Senate’s No. 2 Republican revealed Saturday that Twitter told him he interacted with content from accounts linked to the Russians.
“As part of our recent work to understand Russian-linked activities on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we identified and suspended a number of accounts that were potentially connected to a propaganda effort by a Russian government-linked organization known as the Internet Research Agency,” read the email sent to Sen. John Cornyn.
The email continued: “Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing you because we have reason to believe that you either followed one of these accounts or retweeted or liked content from these accounts during the election period. This is purely for your own information purposes, and is not related to a security concern for your account.”
Cornyn, R-Texas, who is majority whip, shared the email on Twitter. “Finally social media is waking up to manipulation of public opinion by our adversaries. All of us need to step up to meet this challenge, especially the Press," he remarked.
Finally social media is waking up to manipulation of public opinion by our adversaries. All of us need to step up to meet this challenge, especially the Press. pic.twitter.com/BuRRvUVcRP— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) January 20, 2018
On Friday, the social media giant gave an update on its ongoing review into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election on social media.
Twitter said nearly 680,000 people would be getting email notifications that they retweeted or liked a tweet from an account linked to the Russian government-linked Internet Research Agency following a request from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., to take such action.
Also on Friday, Twitter said it found 13,512 accounts engaged in what it called "automated, election-related activity originating out of Russia," bringing the total number of these accounts to 50,258.
"Any such activity represents a challenge to democratic societies everywhere," Twitter said in the blog post. "We're committing to continuing to work on this important issue."
Twitter testified before the Senate Commerce Committee this week amid its ongoing efforts to show lawmakers what it learned from its 2016 mistakes and what steps the company is taking to prevent such missteps ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
