Twitter has accused two Russian media outlets, Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik of meddling in last year’s US presidential election on behalf of the Russian government.
As a result, the micro-blogging site has banned both companies from buying advertising on its platform.
“This decision was based on the retrospective work we’ve been doing around the 2016 U.S. election and the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government,” Twitter said in a statement posted on its official blog.
“We did not come to this decision lightly, and are taking this step now as part of our ongoing commitment to help protect the integrity of the user experience on Twitter.”
Furthermore, Twitter says it’s going to take the $1.9 million it’s earned from RT since it started advertising on the platform back in 2011 and donate it to “support external research into the use of Twitter in civic engagement and elections, including use of malicious automation and misinformation.”
RT and Sputnik haven’t been flung off Twitter altogether; both entities can maintain normal accounts on the social network.
RT for its part has hit back with the rather scathing accusation that Twitter actively encouraged it to spend more money on advertising.
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
To add more fuel to this fire, Twitter’s actions have provoked a response from the Russian foreign ministry, which says Twitter has bowed to pressure from US intelligence services. It described the ban as “another aggressive step” against Russian media and said that there would be “retaliatory measures”.
