Twitter is banning all ads from Russian news agencies RT and Sputnik effective immediately

Twitter co-founder and CEO
Jack Dorsey
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• Twitter announced on Thursday that it will ban all ads
  from Russian news agencies RT and Sputnik effective
  immediately.
• The policy change comes one week before Twitter
  representatives are set to testify before the Senate
  Intelligence Committee about how Russia exploited the platform
  during the election.
• The company said it will donate the $1.9 million
  it is “projected to have earned from RT global advertising
  since they became an advertiser in 2011.”

Twitter announced on
Thursday that it will ban all advertisements from Russian
news agencies RT and Sputnik effective immediately.

“Twitter has made the policy decision to off-board
advertising from all accounts owned by Russia Today (RT) and
Sputnik, effective immediately,” the company wrote in a statement
posted on its blog.

“This decision was based on the retrospective work we’ve
been doing around the 2016 U.S. election and
the 
U.S. intelligence community’s
conclusion
 that both RT and Sputnik attempted to
interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian
government.”

RT directed reporters to a lengthy statement published on
its website claiming that it “never violated any rules
while advertising on Twitter” and “has never spread any
sort of deliberate misinformation.”

Sputnik told Business Insider in a statement that it “has
never used paid for promotion on Twitter.”

“Sputnik news channels are followed by people who are tired
of the mainstream and who are looking for an alternative
perspective on the news,” its press office wrote. Sputnik
said on its website that “Twitter has so far refused
to provide” the news agency with more details about the
ban.

RT said last month that the DOJ has asked it to
register as a foreign agent, and Yahoo reported around the
same time that the FBI had interviewed a former Sputnik
reporter as part of an investigation into whether it was
violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Twitter announced the policy change one week before
its representatives are set to testify before
the Senate Intelligence Committee, along with
representatives from Facebook and Google, about how Russia
exploited the platform to spread disinformation and
propaganda during the 2016 election. 

The committee’s vice-chairman, Sen. Mark Warner, said
earlier this month that the committee’s first interview with
Twitter representatives was “deeply disappointing” and “frankly
inadequate.”

Twitter said on Thursday that RT and Sputnik’s
implementation of “state-sponsored Russian efforts to interfere
with and disrupt” the election “is not something we want on
Twitter.”

Sputnik and RT will still be able to keep their organic
accounts, according to the statement.

The announcement could be an effort to preempt legislation introduced
last week by Warner and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, which
aims to make the process of purchasing political
advertisements more transparent — and more difficult for foreign
entities.  

Twitter has been criticized for not being as
pro-active as Facebook, which said earlier this month that
it plans to strengthen its review process for political ads and
will begin disclosing which pages purchase them moving forward.
And the advertising change does nothing to address how cheap and
easy it is to create automated accounts, or bots, that
Russia-linked accounts are believed to have programmed to
retweet certain keywords, hashtags, and topics en masse
during the election.

Still, the social media giant said it will donate the
$1.9 million it is “projected
 to have earned
from RT global advertising since they became an advertiser in
2011″ and donate those funds “to support external research into
the use of Twitter in civic engagement and elections.”

Read the full statement below:

“Twitter has made the policy decision to off-board advertising
from all accounts owned by Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik,
effective immediately. This decision was based on the
retrospective work we’ve been doing around the 2016 U.S.
election and the U.S. intelligence
community’s conclusion that both RT and
Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of
the Russian government. We did not come to this decision
lightly, and are taking this step now as part of our ongoing
commitment to help protect the integrity of the user experience
on Twitter.

Early this year, the U.S. intelligence community named RT and
Sputnik as implementing state-sponsored Russian efforts to
interfere with and disrupt the 2016 Presidential election,
which is not something we want on Twitter. This decision is
restricted to these two entities based our internal
investigation of their behavior as well as their inclusion in
the January 2017 DNI report. This decision does not apply to
any other advertisers. RT and Sputnik may remain organic users
on our platform, in accordance with the Twitter Rules.

Twitter has also decided to take the $1.9 million we are
projected to have earned from RT global advertising since they
became an advertiser in 2011, which includes the $274,100 in
2016 U.S.-based advertising that we highlighted
in our September 28 blog
post, and donate those funds to support external research
into the use of Twitter in civic engagement and elections,
including use of malicious automation and misinformation, with
an initial focus on elections and automation. We will have more
details to share on this disbursement soon.”

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