A New York University study finds Russian troll Twitter accounts had a minimal impact on 2016 US election voters; 1% of users accounted for 70% of the exposure
Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202! I caught up on some time hanging out with friends this past weekend. Friends are cool.
It also lands after officials concluded Russian operators largely sat out the 2018 midterms, so the study extends a pattern: the interference threat has been real but narrower in effect than the 'decisive' framing suggested.
First-order effects
Researchers and policymakers who built assessments on raw exposure counts — including Twitter's own 1.4M-user disclosure — now face evidence that reach did not translate into persuasion, forcing a split between 'exposed' and 'affected' populations.
The 'trolls decided 2016' thesis takes its most direct empirical hit yet, since 70% of what little exposure existed sat with just 1% of users — an already-engaged slice unlikely to have been swing voters.
Second-order effects
Platform moderation and election-integrity budgets justified by broad-impact narratives come under pressure to justify themselves against measured persuasion effects rather than interaction tallies.
Disinformation scholarship pivots toward concentration analysis — identifying super-exposed users and their networks — shifting where both academics and platforms look for harm.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, election-security policy separates into two problems: foreign intrusion (hacking, infrastructure) versus foreign persuasion (content), with the latter treated as a marginal-sway phenomenon rather than an outcome-deciding one.
The durable lesson for future cycles is that exposure metrics alone cannot settle impact claims — a standard that will shape how any future influence operation, by any actor, gets evaluated.
The trend: Election-influence research is shifting from counting who saw foreign content to measuring whether it actually moved anyone, with concentration findings steadily deflating the 'trolls decided 2016' narrative.
The Cybersecurity 202: Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters Via @timstarks @aaronjschaffer https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
Russia's propaganda efforts surrounding the war in Ukraine really did make the argument that they were master manipulators of foreign public opinion look like a complete joke. https://twitter.com/...
It's wild to me that Facebook, whose user base is both larger than Twitter's and has much more overlap with demographics with the highest voter turnout were conveniently left out of this analysis. Direct collusion was unproven, but Russia absolutely led misinfo campaigns online. …
So, @Nature publishes study on IRA and 2016 US election finding “no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes”. Which is not as surprising as some will think, but interesting. https://www.nature.com/.…
Things you could have known, in 2016, with a cursory understanding of international relations and history, or with an IQ, in PG Wodehouse's words, “30 points below an absent-minded jellyfish”. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
Russiagate wasn't about whether russian bots swung the election for Trump. It was about whether the Trump camp was offered and accepted help more broadly from russia. The short answer to which is that they were and they did. This isn't speculation, it's proven fact. https://twitt…
😂😂😂 You don't say. Russiagate was - and is - one of the most deranged and unhinged conspiracy theories in modern times. It wasn't spread by QAnon or 4Chan users but the vast majority of media corporations, “scholars,” think tank frauds, and NYT/NBC's “disinformation units”: https…
WaPo admitting in 2023 what everyone with a functioning knew in 2016. And, they knew it too...but it didn't stop them pushing dangerous conspiracy theories for 4+ years. How many Americans believe Russia stole the election? https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
NYU study in 2023 says what any sane person knew since 2017. There will not be a similar study on media and Democrat lies from 2017-2020 about “Russia hacking/stealing the election,” however. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
More unhinged Russia hoax hoaxing. Why won't GG acknowledge that Putin attacked the 2016 election to help Trump and that Trump & Co. aided/abetted (and encouraged) this assault on American democracy? Why is that so hard? https://twitter.com/...
Another thing for the purveyors of Russia madness from 2016 to 2019 to be embarrassed about. From WP: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
I don't recall that anyone ever suggested the Russian influence was highly successful. I never saw a credible estimate higher than 1%, and most were considerably lower. But they sure tried. https://twitter.com/...
I guess this is going to be the framing, but as has been known for a while, influence ops don't use Twitter to reach mass audiences the way they do on Facebook. They use it to target journalists and other influential accounts so it will spill into their columns & coverage. https:…
@ggreenwald From the WaPo article: “But the study doesn't go so far as to say that Russia had no influence on people who voted for President Donald Trump.” “Lastly, it doesn't suggest that foreign influence operations aren't a threat at all.” Read here: https://www.washingtonpost…
How interesting that this is coming out now. Will the Washington Post address the countless stories they wrote hyping Russian influence on the 2016 race? The Pulitzer they won for such coverage? https://twitter.com/...
Fascinating new study which concludes: “It would appear unlikely that the Russian foreign influence campaign on Twitter could have had much more than a relatively minor influence on individual-level attitudes and voting behavior for four related reasons” https://www.nature.com/..…