In Most Aggressive Push By U.S. Social Media Yet, Twitter Bans Sputnik, RT Ads ‘Effective Immediately’

Regular readers know that we are no fan of Sputnik “News.”

See Sputnik isn’t “news.” Sputnik is propaganda. And not in that way where all news is propaganda. I mean actual, bald-faced lying, shameless, bullshit propaganda.

That kind of propaganda where when you interview someone for a job, one of the questions you ask is: “what would you do if we asked you to lie?”

That kind of propaganda that purports to be an actual newswire but runs stories that cite anonymous bloggers (and yes, I realize the irony in us saying that but as far as we know, we haven’t been cited by the Washington Post lately) when penning stories about ISIS conspiracy theories.

That kind of propaganda where you fire employees for refusing to lie about murders (see linked post above).

You get the idea. You can read our entire Sputnik archive here for some hearty laughs.

Well here’s the thing about RT and Sputnik: they are part and parcel of the alt-Right propaganda loop that we’ve talked about at length in these pages. Here’s how it works:

But what the vast majority of netizens (both liberal and conservative) in the US don’t understand is how concentrated an effort this truly was. And more importantly, it wasn’t just carried out via blatantly fake, fly-by-night websites.

Rather, this was an effort that utilized some of the most “trusted” alt-Right portals as conduits. Portals which are just as popular (if not more so) today than they were in the lead-up to the election. Portals which I guarantee some HR readers still frequent. These are the sites I commonly refer to as “progeny” of Breitbart.

One of the most common tactics among such sites was to create a veritable echo chamber of bullshit. To be sure, all media is an echo chamber of bullshit. That goes for Fox and Breitbart on the Right and for CNN, MSNBC, etc. on the Left.

But this was different. This was much more dangerous because unlike Breitbart, the sites I’m talking about weren’t (and still aren’t) burdened by a concurrent effort to cultivate a quasi-legitimate image. That is, they’re just “legitimate” enough to be taken seriously by large numbers of people, but not legitimate enough to worry about the reputational consequences of doing things like citing Alex Jones (who once contended that the lining of juice boxes was turning frogs into bisexuals), or running with wild stories about the return of McCarthyism or about the CIA hiding in your PS4.

What these sites did was take stories (likely emanating from emissaries in the remnants of the Eastern bloc), combine them with what, on the surface, looked like learned analysis, and then pass them around to each other, creating the illusion of legitimacy and journalistic veracity.

Often, those stories would be subsequently cited by RT and Sputnik (popular Russian state-owned, English language propaganda outlets). Then, the very same sites would turn around and cite the very same RT and Sputnik as proof that they were correct.

By the time the recycling exercise was complete, no one could tell where the story originally came from. 

We have long contended that it’s just a matter of time before social media starts pulling the plug on this bullshit and in the latest testament to that contention, the New York Times is out with this:

Twitter will ban Russia Today and Sputnik, the two Kremlin-backed international news outlets, from advertising on its platform, a company official said on Thursday.

The decision marks one of the most aggressive moves by an American social media company against the Russian outlets, which United States intelligence officials have linked to a wide-ranging Kremlin effort, both covert and overt, to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.

Twitter’s ban comes as United States authorities are pressuring Russia Today to register as a foreign agent under a World War II-era law intended to stop Nazi propaganda.

“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,” Twitter said in a blog post announcing the ban.

The ban will not apply to any other advertisers, Twitter said. Russia Today and Sputnik will be allowed to retain their Twitter accounts.

Twitter said it had earned $1.9 million in advertising revenue from Russia Today since 2011. The company said it would now donate the money to research into the civic impact of Twitter, as well as its abuse by purveyors of fake news and propaganda.

Here’s the blog post from Twitter:

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.

Now let us just remind you about what comes next. Next, these social media outlets are going to figure out the network that allows fake news pushed by U.S.-based bloggers to be blasted around via tens of thousands of bot accounts and other dubious members of the echo chamber.

Once those are shut down and the machine starts to stall, the clicks will dry up. Once the clicks dry up, so will the advertising revenue those clicks generate.

The final act – assuming the purveyors haven’t by then escaped to some cottage in the Eastern bloc – will be advertisers suing for the money they spent on “eye balls” that weren’t really “eye balls.”