How Kremlin accounts manipulate Twitter

Olena Kurilo became the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Bloodied and bandaged, the 53-year-old teacher said she couldn’t believe what had happened to her and her town of Chuhuiv.

Her picture was on the front pages of newspapers around the world.

Over the next few days, the Russian government’s social media accounts began posting a video claiming that Olena was not injured at all.

“Great photos by the way, they were all over the news,” says the Russian narrator.

The video then claims Olena was photographed unharmed two days later.

“A few days later, good for her, no scratch.”

This claim is unfounded, the BBC has confirmed the photo as genuine, as has Reuters. Wild conspiracy theories like these are not uncommon on social media.

But what makes this conspiracy theory so strange is that it was shared by an official Russian government Twitter account — the Russian Mission in Geneva. Two weeks later, the tweet is still live.

The Russian government has a huge network of official Twitter accounts – the BBC found more than 100 of them. They range from accounts representing foreign missions or embassies with a few thousand followers to accounts with more than a million followers. President Putin has his own account. Many of the accounts are labeled by Twitter as Russian government organizations.

But while many of these accounts have spread disinformation, Twitter handles it differently than Russian state media – like RT or Sputnik.

On February 28, Twitter announced that it would prevent tweets from Russian state-affiliated media from being allowed to “amplify” — meaning they would not be recommended in the home timeline, in notifications, and elsewhere on Twitter. But Twitter has confirmed to the BBC that this policy does not include Russian government accounts.

Tim Graham, a social media analyst at Australia’s QUT Digital Media Research Center, describes this as a “loophole” in Twitter’s moderation policy, allowing the Russian government to spread misinformation.

“It’s certainly a blind spot in Twitter’s defense against disinformation,” he says.

Intrigued by this spider web of Russian government accounts, Mr. Graham, who specializes in analyzing coordinated social media activity, decided to investigate further. He analyzed 75 Russian government Twitter profiles, which together have more than 7 million followers. The accounts have received 30 million likes, 36 million retweets and 4 million replies.

He looked at how many times each Twitter account retweeted one of the other 74 profiles in an hour. He discovered that the Kremlin’s network of Twitter accounts are working together to retweet and drive traffic. This practice is sometimes referred to as “astroturfing” — when the owner of multiple accounts uses the profiles they control to retweet content and increase reach.

“It’s a coordinated retweet network,” says Graham.

“If these accounts weren’t retweeting stuff at the same time, the network would just be a bunch of separate dots. So what the network shows very clearly is that there is a very dense number of connections as to how these accounts retweet.

“They use that as an engine to spread their favorite narrative on Twitter, and they get away with it,” he says.

Coordinated activities involving multiple accounts are against Twitter’s rules.

“You cannot artificially boost conversations by using multiple accounts,” according to Twitter’s rules.

But Twitter doesn’t treat all accounts equally. Tweets from governments and elected officials may be given more latitude in terms of moderation. The Company says on his website that there may be a public interest in seeing Tweets that would otherwise violate its rules.

However, the company doesn’t treat official accounts any differently when it comes to coordinated behavior — there’s no exception.

The BBC took Mr Graham’s research to Twitter, but the company did not directly respond to his findings.

The BBC also asked the Russian embassy in the UK about the suggestion that official Russian Twitter accounts are acting in a coordinated manner – and that many are sharing misinformation. The BBC has received no reply.

On March 10, the embassy itself tweeted that the bombing of a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol was faked. The report claimed that the women pictured at the scene were actors.

A photo was posted of a woman being carried on a stretcher with “FAKE” written above the picture. The claim was wrong. A few days later, it was reported that both she and her baby had died.

Twitter deleted several tweets claiming “FAKE” after the BBC flagged them. However, there are many other examples of Russian disinformation on the Russian government’s Twitter accounts.

The unsubstantiated claim that Olena Kurilo wasn’t actually hurt is still alive – it was retweeted by more than 20 different Russian government accounts.

Unsubstantiated claims that Ukraine possesses bioweapons were shared by the Russian network and are still relevant – as are claims of an impending chemical attack allegedly being prepared by Ukrainians.

The problem Twitter faces is that in times of war, proving content false can be messy and complex.

Savvas Zannettou, who analyzes social media moderation at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands, says war makes monitoring social media even more difficult.

“It’s impossible to really moderate…the information is coming at a very fast pace and it’s coming from everywhere,” he says.

It seems that two things are happening here. Confused and incomplete information on the ground leads to platforms like Twitter deleting only examples of easily proven misinformation.

Additionally, Twitter’s own public interest exceptions mean that tweets from government officials may be treated differently than other accounts. The BBC asked Twitter if tweets from Russian ministries and embassies would be included in their public interest exceptions, but the social media company did not respond to that specific question.

Twitter said, “We have taken numerous enforcement actions against Russian embassy accounts, including requests that tweets be removed.”

Twitter also said it would do more to flag Kremlin-affiliated accounts in the coming days. “We will extend our government account labels to additional Russian embassies to add context for people interacting with these accounts on Twitter.”

The Kremlin’s social media accounts also exist on Facebook and other platforms – it’s not just a problem for Twitter.

In January 2021, following the Capitol Hill riots, Twitter banned Donald Trump for his role in repeating allegations of voter fraud. Twitter argued that repeated disinformation posted from a position of power led to real-world violence.

As official Russian accounts continue to publish wild misinformation in wartime, it’s entirely possible that the Kremlin may end up facing yet another sanction – being banned from Twitter.

James Clayton is the BBC’s North American technology reporter based in San Francisco. Follow him on Twitter @jamesclayton5.