After Facebook, now Twitter comes under investigators’ radar

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• For weeks now Facebook had been in the hot seat in the probe
• Clinton’s aides faced an overwhelming wave of Twitter attacks
• Senate Intelligence Committee investigators questioned Twitter representatives

WASHINGTON, U.S. - After Facebook, now Twitter has come under closer scrutiny by the Russia probe investigators.

The probe into the possible collusion between Trump and Russia took a whole new turn after Facebook’s revelations a few weeks back.

Now, Twitter is in the same hot seat, with a closed-door briefing on Thursday in which Senate staffers put the social media company into focus.

According to reports, during the 2016 election cycle, Hillary Clinton’s surrogates and campaign aides faced what they called an overwhelming wave of Twitter attacks.

They believe some of it was driven by Russian bots and trolls.

On Thursday, Twitter told congressional investigators in the meeting and then later revealed in a blog that it has shut down 201 accounts that were tied to the same Russian operatives who posted thousands of political ads on Facebook.

The microblogging site popularly used by Trump during and after the campaigning said that it also found three accounts from the news site RT — which Twitter linked to the Kremlin — that spent $274,100 in ads on Twitter’s platform in 2016.

At the meeting, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) is said to have questioned whether the company is doing enough to confront the problem of Russian meddling.

Warner called Twitter’s presentation to a closed-door meeting of lawmakers from the Senate and House “deeply disappointing” and “inadequate on almost every level.”

Warner said that the company “showed an enormous lack of understanding... about how serious this issue is, the threat it poses to democratic institutions.”

The meeting between Twitter and Congressional investigators came as part of a widening government probe into how Russian operatives used Facebook, Google, Twitter and other social media platforms to sow division and disinformation during the 2016 campaign. 

Those technology companies are under increasing pressure from Capitol Hill to investigate Russian meddling on their platforms.

They are now facing the possibility of new regulations that could impact their massive advertising businesses.

On November 1, Facebook, Google and Twitter are being summoned to a public hearing on Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, in its presentation, Twitter said that the accounts which were taken down over the last month, were associated with 470 accounts and pages that Facebook last month said came from the International Research Agency, a Russia-connect troll farm. 

Twitter added that the groups on Facebook had 22 corresponding Twitter accounts. 

Later, Twitter reportedly found an additional 179 accounts linked to those 22.

Warner said that effort was just based on the work Facebook had done and then simply searching more about those specific efforts. 

He surmised that this “either shows unwillingness to take this threat seriously or a complete lack of a fulsome effort.”

Twitter did not reveal who the ads reached or how many times they were shared in its blog post - and even failed to clarify whether Twitter did a broader search of its users for Russian interference.

Alex Howard, deputy director of the Sunlight Foundation said, “There’s plenty of evidence that Russian intelligence services have been on Twitter for years and have used Twitter to amplify messages and inserted lines of attack in ways that got amplified by mainstream and partisan media.”

Howard added, “We need to think very carefully about what role we want these companies to have in our debate – and, since these platforms largely regulate themselves, what kind of accountability we want them to have.”

Days after Facebook’s revelation, last week Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) urged colleagues in a letter, to support a bill that would create new transparency requirements for platforms that run political ads online akin to those already in place for TV stations. 

Further, from Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex) – lawmakers from across the political spectrum have called for more scrutiny into the market power of technology companies over the last few months.

The greatest scrutiny was faced by Facebook, which said that it will provide 3,000 political ads, in addition to payment information and data about who those ads targeted, to Congress in the coming days.

Earlier this week, Mark Zuckerberg apologized for saying it was “pretty crazy” that fake news could have influenced the U.S. election in a Facebook post.

He wrote, “Calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret it. This is too important an issue to be dismissive.”

He also emphasized the role Facebook played in spurring authentic debate and sustaining democratic ideals was much greater than any exploitation that took place.

He said, “The data we have has always shown that our broader impact -- from giving people a voice to enabling candidates to communicate directly to helping millions of people vote -- played a far bigger role in this election.”

Meanwhile, the largest online advertising company in the world, Google too has been asked to provide information to Congressional investigators.

The Alphabet-owned company will have to testify before Congress, but has not said whether it will do so. 

Claiming that it has “seen no evidence” of a Russian-promoted ad campaign, Google has said it will cooperate with any investigation. 

U.S. intelligence officials have been studying Russia's interest closely in tapping social media to fulfill its own geopolitical ends. 

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