Thread by @cjcmichel

A couple quick findings from @ru_rbc's bombshell report on Russian social media operations during the US election: meduza.io/en/news/2017/1…

1. The social media accounts run by Russia's troll factory reached some 30 million people each week during the height of the 2016 campaign:

2. About 100 unwitting Americans were paid to help stage some 40 events across the U.S., organized by these Russian social media accounts:

The main topics targeted by these Russian social media accounts included racial animosity (see: thinkprogress.org/russia-faceboo…, thinkprogress.org/black-matters-…) and Texas secession (see: thinkprogress.org/armed-white-su…)

4. One of the fake Russian accounts the @ru_rbc investigation (rbc.ru/technology_and…) focuses on is BlackMattersUS, which @thinkprogress broke last week: thinkprogress.org/black-matters-…

5. One of the fake Russian accounts saw its tweets work their way into stories from Yahoo, Al Jazeera, Business Insider, BBC:

6. Many of the largest fake Russian accounts have been identified so far, but @ru_rbc has identified a few more - these are the accounts focused on race:

7. Among the largest fake Russian accounts focused on politics, the "Army of Jesus" and "South United" accounts hadn't been previously reported:

8. Fake Russian social media accounts even targeted Native Americans:

9. And while it hasn't gotten much attention thus far, Instagram (in red) was just as abused as Facebook and Twitter by these fake Russian accounts:

10. The most popular Twitter account identified as Russian by the RBK investigation was @TEN_GOP, which had previously made its way into The Daily Beast, HuffPo, Fox News, Vocativ, etc.

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And for @PostOpinions, I wrote about what it was like to follow one of these fake Russian accounts since early 2016: washingtonpost.com/news/democracy…

Here's Posobiec celebrating the return of a fake Russian Twitter account:

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K.

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.@JackPosobiec deleted the tweet, but here he is cheering the return of that Twitter account revealed today as Russian:

Coda: Russian operatives tested out organizing protests in the U.S. via ... free hot dogs in Times Square. talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/us-a…

Last month, Trump publicly thanked a Twitter account that said it was run by the folks behind what we now know are Russian accounts: thinkprogress.org/trump-retweet-…

'@TEN_GOP was one of the top influencers in spreading the #Berkeley hashtag last April.' buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/…