A nation must think before it acts.
Fox Fellow Clint Watts Cited by Washington Post on Russia, Twitter
In many ways, Twitter has been the most vulnerable to exploitation among social media companies. The company officially says that 5 percent of accounts on Twitter are bots, but outside researchers say the number could be much higher.
It is easy to create fake accounts on Twitter, making it hard for the company to discern the extent of Russian meddling, analysts said.
“They have no idea who is on their platform. If it wasn’t for Facebook’s data, they would have no idea these were even Russian accounts,” said Clint Watts, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “Anyone can create an account anonymously on Twitter and hide its origin.”