- The staff at Twitter bowed to pressure campaign from a Democratic lawmaker in the fall of 2017, changing its advertising policy to allow for a closer relationship with U.S. intelligence agencies, according to internal company documents published Tuesday by independent journalist Matt Taibbi.
- Twitter executives did not believe that there was significant activity by Russian election interference groups on the platform as of Sept. 6, 2017, and had internally decided to direct concerned reporters to Facebook, who they believed to be facing the brunt of congressional scrutiny, according to Taibbi.
- But Twitter faced heavy pressure after Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia — then the vice chair of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee — slammed the company for producing a “frankly inadequate” report on Russian activity on the platform, in which the company informed the committee that it had suspended just 22 of 2,700 accounts it had suspected of being aligned with Russian influence groups, according to Taibbi.