Twitter may have been even more damaging to our democracy in 2016 than Facebook.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

For three weeks, a harsh spotlight has been trained on Facebook over its disclosure that Russians used fake pages and ads, designed to look like the work of American activists, to spread inflammatory messages during and since the presidential campaign. 

But there is evidence that Twitter may have been used even more extensively than Facebook in the Russian influence campaign last year. In addition to Russia-linked Twitter accounts that posed as Americans, the platform was also used for large-scale automated messaging, using “bot” accounts to spread false stories and promote news articles about emails from Democratic operatives that had been obtained by Russian hackers.

Twitter has struggled for years to rein in the fake accounts overrunning its platform. Unlike Facebook, the service does not require its users to provide their real name (or at least a facsimile of one) and allows automated accounts — arguing that they are a useful tool for tasks such as customer service. Beyond those restrictions, there is also an online black market for services that can allow for the creation of large numbers of Twitter bots, which can be controlled by a single person while still being difficult to distinguish from real accounts. 

Since last month, researchers at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan initiative of the German Marshall Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, have been publicly tracking 600 Twitter accounts — human users and suspected bots alike — they have linked to Russian influence operations. Those were the accounts pushing the opposing messages on the N.F.L. and the national anthem.

Facebook has been receiving the lion's share of the attention concerning the Kremlin using social media to manipulate American voters and spread misinformation, and certainly they played a big part, but Twitter may have been an even bigger player in the undermining of our democracy.

Courtesy of CNN: 

A social media campaign calling itself "Blacktivist" and linked to the Russian government used both Facebook and Twitter in an apparent attempt to amplify racial tensions during the U.S. presidential election, two sources with knowledge of the matter told CNN. The Twitter account has been handed over to Congress; the Facebook account is expected to be handed over in the coming days. 

Both Blacktivist accounts, each of which used the handle Blacktivists, regularly shared content intended to stoke outrage. "Black people should wake up as soon as possible," one post on the Twitter account read. "Black families are divided and destroyed by mass incarceration and death of black men," another read. The accounts also posted videos of police violence against African Americans. 

The Blacktivist accounts provide further evidence that Russian-linked social media accounts saw racial tensions as something to be exploited in order to achieve the broader Russian goal of dividing Americans and creating chaos in U.S. politics during a campaign in which race repeatedly became an issue.

Apparently there was no group that the Russians did not find a way to manipulate.

And I mean NO group.

Did you know there are 200+ more fake antifa? See list w/ IDs and names. https://t.co/6ucY1soXll cc @RVAwonk pic.twitter.com/BTonwS2258

— OperationWolverines (@OpWolverines) September 27, 2017

Clearly the Russians recognized divisions within the country, and exploited as many of them as they could in order to disrupt our ability to get along with each other and to undermine any chances of communicating openly and honestly.

There are super villains in comic books who had less devious schemes.