Andrew Diprose

As Facebook, Google and Twitter face-off against US politicians over their role in disseminating Russian propaganda, authorities in the UK are conducting a similar investigation around Brexit and the 2017 general election. The question is the same: how much influence did Russian-linked trolls have over major political decisions in the West?

"Given the fact the Russian government is interested in the EU, it is probable there is some activity over there," says author and journalist Andrei Soldatov, who focusses on internet use in Russia and spoke at this year's WIRED Security event. In the UK and across Europe, a growing number of politicians have called for more information to be published around Russia's role in the Brexit vote. "Putin's agents tried to influence the US election," Guy Verhofstadt, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator tweeted yesterday. "We need to know if they interfered in the #Brexit vote too". Labour MP Ben Bradshaw has called for a new investigation into Russia's influence with disinformation in the West.


Last week, Damian Collins, who is leading a parliamentary review into fake news wrote to Twitter and Facebook asking them to provide examples of Russian-linked accounts, pages and adverts, including who they were targeted at and how many people viewed them during the Brexit referendum and 2017 general election. The companies have until November 7 to reply to the inquiry.

Google-owned YouTube says it will attempt to cooperate with any government inquiries it is asked to. A spokesperson for Twitter said it "recognises that the integrity of the election process itself is integral to the health of a democracy" and will help authorities with formal investigations. Facebook did not immediately respond to request about UK investigations but it has previously said will provide the inquiry with information once it has reviewed it.

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While none of the companies have yet published data of Russian ad activity around Brexit or this year's election, there is evidence that social networks were gamed to alter discourse around the referendum. One study published in a peer-reviewed computer science journal and initially reported on by BuzzFeed found a large network of Twitter bots was used to amplify anti-EU messages. The study says 13,493 accounts largely supported the leave campaign and then vanished after the vote.

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Russia's potential influence on the UK's political affairs is an issue that has been partially addressed at the highest levels of politics. In December 2016, prime minister Theresa May was directly asked about interference from Putin's government. "I think that everyone is aware of the way in which Russia is currently operating, and of the more aggressive stance that it is taking in a number of respects," she said in the House of Commons, adding that "state-sponsored intervention" was being taken "very seriously indeed". So if everyone knows what the country may be up to, how did it happen?

In recent years, as social networks have reached colossal scale, they have struggled to moderate what's posted on their platforms. Twitter has had a hard time taking control of wide-scale abuse; YouTube has been plagued by extremist views; and Facebook has faced multiple censorship claims. All these have flown largely under the radar and only been surfaced by detailed third-party research. Russian influence, seemingly, has been no different.

In the US, the biggest tech firms have started to reveal how much of an influence Russian propaganda has had. Over a two year period, 29 million people in the US saw an advert purchased by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian propaganda organisation based in Saint Petersburg. Interactions including likes and shares of these ads saw the posts appearing in the news feeds of 126 million people in the US. This is around 40 per cent of the country's population.


Previously, Facebook has admitted $100,000 was spent by a Russian company and consisted of 3,000 ads spread across 470 "unauthentic accounts and pages". Facebook says around five per cent of these ads appeared on Instagram. Separately, officials in Ukraine have said they warned Facebook about Russia's misinformation campaigns in 2015.

Twitter has admitted 2,752 accounts were associated with the IRA – previously the firm said it had found 200 Russia-linked bots. YouTube has discovered 18 accounts that are "likely associated" with the Russian group. It says 1,108 such ​videos ​were uploaded, totalling ​43 ​hours ​of ​content, with 309,000 views and a total $4,700 spent across the platform.

Where the US and EU may differ in their responses to Facebook, Google, and Twitter's disclosure of Russian-sponsored posts is the action that may be taken. In meetings with US Congress all three said they wouldn't sign-up to a proposed honest ads law, preferring to police themselves. Across the EU, inaction has been met with new laws and punishments. Regulators are following Germany's example of regulating how social media companies respond to hate speech. Separately, Google has been fined €2.42 billion for breaking antitrust rules. Regulators and politicians have proven they're not slow to clamp down on the actions of tech's biggest firms. And if action against state-sponsored propaganda isn't taken then the EU could look to regulate again.