Twitter says it shut down accounts linked to Russian operatives

Twitter's Twitter account.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Twitter announced Thursday that it found and has shut down 201 accounts linked to the same Russian operatives who bought political ads on Facebook in an attempt to deepen political divisions in the United States.

Three accounts were from the Kremlin-backed news site RT, which spent $274,100 in ads on Twitter during the 2016 presidential campaign, The Washington Post reports. Twitter made presentations to Senate Intelligence Committee and House Intelligence Committee staffers on Thursday, and Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said he didn't think the company was doing enough to keep Russian operatives from meddling in U.S. affairs and "showed an enormous lack of understanding ... about how serious this issue is, the threat it poses to democratic institutions."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.