For everyone who doesn’t have their head in the sand, it’s undeniable that Russia used social media to meddle in the 2016 presidential election. Unfortunately, companies like Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr have been very reluctant to admit their platforms were abused—and have been doing pretty badly on the transparency front.
In January, Twitter notified over a million Twitter users who’ve interacted with content from accounts connected to the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked propaganda organization. However, that doesn’t go far enough. It feels like a hollow gesture because individuals have no idea what content was the propaganda. The people emailed aren’t even able to peruse their own archives for any offending likes or retweets because Twitter deleted them.
NBC News believes that the mass deletion isn’t the most effective course of action—and that’s why they’re releasing a database of the Russian tweets.
"Twitter's knee jerk reaction is to purge," said David Carroll, an associate professor of media design at the New School. "What it does is erase history in an almost Orwellian way."
At the request of NBC News, three sources familiar with Twitter's data systems cross-referenced the partial list of names released by Congress to create a partial database of tweets that could be recovered.
Why should we care about Russia’s Twitter abuse when we’re over a year into Trump’s presidency? Well, it’s because the Russians are still at it.
Despite Twitter's pledges to crack down, Russian trolls and bots are still exploiting the social media platform to interfere with elections, including our midterms. To help shine a light on this persistent threat to democracy, NBC News is open sourcing its data.
We need to do our best to arm ourselves with as much knowledge as possible. It’s vital to know your enemy when the enemy is lies and manipulation.
You can see and download the data here.