Twitter is banning advertising from all accounts owned by RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik effective immediately, after US investigators concluded the Russian media companies attempted to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, reports Bloomberg.
This is one of the biggest changes made yet by social media companies who have been called to respond to the US government’s concerns. Twitter has said that RT, a TV network funded by the Russian government, spent $274,100 in US ads in 2016.
“This decision was based on the retrospective work we’ve been doing around the 2016 US election. 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,” the US microblogging platform stated yesterday.
In an answer published today, RT said that Twitter actually solicited it for even more election ads. Claiming that Twitter’s statements are “absolutely groundless and greatly-misleading,” the Kremlin-backed media company reveals the details of the 2016 negotiations during which Twitter representatives pitched to RT a large-sum advertising proposal.
This proposal, which was developed around promoting RT’s US election coverage on Twitter, “was eventually declined by [us],” RT asserts.
RT claims it has “never been involved in any illegal activity online,” “never pursued an agenda of influencing the US election through any platforms, including Twitter,” “never violated any rules while advertising on Twitter,” “never dealt with bots or any other compromised tools on any social media platform,” and “never spread any sort of deliberate misinformation.”
