Even as the president has railed against multiple investigations into Russia’s meddling in U.S. politics, he may have become Exhibit A of the foreign government’s influence.
Early Saturday morning, President Trump tweeted his gratitude to a social-media super-fan, Nicole Mincey, magnifying her praise of him to his 35 million followers.
Here’s the problem the account, according to experts, bears a lot of signs of a Russia-backed disinformation campaign.
On Sunday, Twitter suspended the Mincey account, known as @ProTrump45, after several other users revealed that it was probably a fake, created to amplify pro-Trump content.
“Nineteen to 20 percent of the messages in the month before the election were originated by bots,” said Emilio Ferrara, a researcher at the University of Southern California who conducted research on the impact of bots on the 2016 election. “About 400,000 accounts that posted tweets related to the political conversation we believe were bots.”
I THINK THIS BOARD IS INFESTED WITH RUSSIAN BOTS - NO ONE CAN BE AS STUPID AS
THEY PRETEND.
Early Saturday morning, President Trump tweeted his gratitude to a social-media super-fan, Nicole Mincey, magnifying her praise of him to his 35 million followers.
Here’s the problem the account, according to experts, bears a lot of signs of a Russia-backed disinformation campaign.
On Sunday, Twitter suspended the Mincey account, known as @ProTrump45, after several other users revealed that it was probably a fake, created to amplify pro-Trump content.
“Nineteen to 20 percent of the messages in the month before the election were originated by bots,” said Emilio Ferrara, a researcher at the University of Southern California who conducted research on the impact of bots on the 2016 election. “About 400,000 accounts that posted tweets related to the political conversation we believe were bots.”
I THINK THIS BOARD IS INFESTED WITH RUSSIAN BOTS - NO ONE CAN BE AS STUPID AS
THEY PRETEND.
