---
title: "Twitter Update: 50,000 Russian Accounts Tweeting During Election"
description: Twitter says the number of Russia-linked tweets during the 2016 election is much higher than previously thought. It also is emailing users who help spread bogus tweets.
---

[SecureWorld News ](https://www.secureworld.io/industry-news)

# [Twitter Update: 50,000 Russian Accounts Tweeting During Election](https://www.secureworld.io/industry-news/how-many-fake-tweets-election)

 Written by [SecureWorld News Team](https://www.secureworld.io/industry-news/author/secureworld-news-team) | Mon | Jan 22, 2018 | 4:04 PM Z

Twitter continues its deep dive into the ways Russia-backed tweets spread through the platform during the 2016 election—while posing as real people or organizations.

And it quietly posted a note on its blog that the problem was even bigger than it had previously revealed.

### **Russia-backed fake tweet examples**

It also shared new examples of bogus tweets linked to Russia's Internet Research Agency, or IRA, from the week prior to the 2016 presidential election.

### **Hundreds of thousands getting emails from Twitter**

The company is now reaching out directly to those who unknowingly helped spread the fake tweets: "Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing notifications to 677,775 people in the United States who followed one of these accounts or retweeted or liked a Tweet from these accounts during the election period," the company said over the weekend.

### **More Russia-linked Twitter accounts identified**

And the number of Russian-linked accounts keeps growing as the investigation continues:

"... we have identified 13,512 additional accounts, for a total of 50,258 automated accounts that we identified as Russian-linked and Tweeting election-related content during the election period," the company said.

It has now turned over the "Twitter handles" being used by these accounts to Congress. 

[View full post](https://www.secureworld.io/industry-news/how-many-fake-tweets-election)

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