Associated PressTwitter has banned advertising from all accounts owned by Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik based on findings by the U.S. intelligence community that both entities attempted to interfere with the U.S. presidential election on behalf of the Russian government, Twitter announced on Thursday. Twitter said its decision, one of the boldest steps taken by a social media company against the Russian outlets, was not made “lightly.” The company said its advertising restriction is effective immediately and for now will only affect RT and Sputnik. Both of the Kremlin-backed sites can continue to use their Twitter accounts as “organic users,” the company said. Last month, Twitter said it found 201 accounts on its site linked to the fraudulent accounts Facebook had previously identified. Twitter also reported that RT bought $274,100 of ads on Twitter in 2016.

Source: Forbes October 26, 2017 17:55 UTC