Digital, culture, media and sport committee wants to see lists of suspect Russian-related accounts

A parliamentary committee is demanding Twitter hands over lists of Russian-related accounts that may have attempted to interfere in the UK’s democratic process.



The call from MPs on the digital, culture, media and sport committee came after Twitter told a US Congress inquiry it had detected thousands of Russian troll accounts posting material linked to American politics.

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The committee’s chairman, Damian Collins, has written to the social networking service’s chief executive officer, Jack Dorsey, asking for information on any Russian accounts posting about UK politics.

The MPs are conducting an inquiry into the phenomenon of “fake news” in the wake of claims that social media may have been manipulated by overseas actors in an attempt to influence last year’s EU referendum or the snap general election on 8 June.

Twitter’s acting general counsel, Sean Edgett, gave evidence to a Senate hearing in Washington this week revealing that it had traced 2,752 accounts to the Internet Research Agency, the Russia-based troll factory, which sent out 1.4m messages in just over two months.

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Collins told Dorsey: “It has subsequently emerged that some of these accounts were also posting content that relates to the politics of the United Kingdom. Any interference by foreign actors in the democratic process of the United Kingdom is clearly a serious matter.

“I would therefore ask that Twitter provides to the committee a list of accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency and any other Russian linked accounts that it has removed and examples of any posts from these accounts that are linked to the United Kingdom.”

Collins gave Twitter a deadline of the end of November to provide the information.