Tech Tent: What was in Twitter's troll data dump?
- Published
Fake accounts posed as angry Americans to influence conversations
What can 10 million tweets tell us about how Twitter is used as a propaganda tool?
On this week's Tech Tent podcast, we explore the lessons to be learned from the vast data dump released by the company.
Stream or download, external the latest Tech Tent podcast
It is no secret that Twitter has been used in attempts to sway public opinion around the world.
Most of the tweets exposed by Twitter came from Russia's Internet Research Agency, which has been accused of trying to sow discord in the United States and intervene in the 2016 election on behalf of Donald Trump.
Twitter had suspended the accounts in question months ago but it released a treasure trove of data as a tool for researchers and journalists.
It gave advance access to the Atlantic Council think tank. Its digital forensic research lab took a close look at the techniques employed by the troll farms.
Ben Nimmo led the effort and told me the data cache showed a gradual evolution from the early days, when most of the tweets were quite boring.
"You could see them learning how to use social media," he explained.
"Individual accounts started getting more edgy, more aggressive, and trying to be more funny. And the more they did that, the more they were getting audience response."
Posing as angry Americans, they responded to breaking news such as the San Bernardino shooting. They intervened on both sides of the gun control debate, trying to fan the flames of discord.
Mr Nimmo said there appeared to be some sort of editorial figure in charge. Thousands of tweets would suddenly coalesce around a hashtag.
"You could imagine the editorial meeting where someone said, 'Right lads, this is your hashtag and this is what you'll be posting.'"
While most of the activity first revolved around Russian and then American politics, the Atlantic Council team did spot some tweets about the UK's EU membership referendum.
On the day of the vote, nearly 1,100 tweets in the trove featured the hashtag #ReasonsToLeaveEU - popular with Leave campaigners.
Did any of this have an impact in changing votes?
Not in the case of Brexit, says Ben Nimmo, given the fact that Russian tweets were such a tiny proportion of the total conversation during the campaign.
He is more circumspect about the impact in the United States.
On the day of the 2016 election, one Russian troll tweeted the false claim that the voting machines had been fixed to favour Hillary Clinton. That single tweet had 25,000 retweets on the day. That kind of activity by the trolls had gone on for months.
"They probably had some impact but it's hard to measure it," said Mr Nimmo.
Also on this week's podcast:
Robert Halfon MP explains why asking Pepper the robot to give evidence to a House of Commons committee was not a gimmick
And we hear from the founder of WeFarm - a social network that uses a low-tech approach to help African farmers share ideas via their mobile phones
Stream or download, external the latest Tech Tent podcast