According to an article over at Ars Technica, Twitter is sending out 677,775 emails to users that took the bait on fake accounts during the 2016 election that were being run by the IRA (Internet Research Agency). Yes, the IRA that is and continues to be the Russian troll farm that was exposed last year.
On Friday, Twitter took an end-of-the-week opportunity to dump some better-late-than-never news onto its userbase. For anybody who followed or engaged with a Twitter account that faked like an American during the 2016 election season but was actually linked to a major Russian propaganda campaign, you're about to get an email.
Apparently, Twitter is actually trying to crack down on such nefarious activity (as is Facebook and other social networks). Instead of burying their heads in the sand as they initially did, there is a concerted effort to weed out bullshit accounts and trends.
The post points out internal Twitter efforts to better identify and block illegitimate accounts. Among other disclosures, the announcement claims that Twitter "detects and blocks approximately 523,000 suspicious logins daily for being generated through automation" and that its automatic detection tools have gotten better at noticing trends such as "near-instantaneous replies to Tweets, non-random Tweet timing, and coordinated engagement.”
Perhaps best of all, though, is that the Senate's second in power (and unfortunate representative from my state, Texas) John Cornyn, not only fell for at least one of the fake accounts, he responded to it. He then went on to misunderstand the email he received.
To see what Twitter's email notifications for this news look like, take a peak at the notice sent to US Senator John Cornyn (R-TX.)
And yeah, he's hearing about his complete misunderstanding of technology.
Good times.