Twitter has been scolded by MPs for a second time for what they said was a failure to provide full details of Russian accounts meddling in the Brexit vote.
Twitter’s latest letter to the Commons culture committee said that only 1 per cent of the 13,500 accounts identified as Russian trolls active over Brexit by City University were registered in Russia and it had not found sufficiently strong evidence to conclusively link any to the Russian state.
Damian Collins, chairman of the committee, demanded that Twitter list the accounts controlled by Russian agencies even if they were not registered there. He said: “I’m afraid that the failure to obtain straight answers is simply increasing concerns about these issues, rather than reassuring people.”
The committee contacted Twitter and Facebook in November, requesting details of Russian accounts meddling in the EU referendum and snap election.
In the US Twitter has identified 3,814 accounts linked to the Kremlin that posted 175,000 tweets during the ten weeks before the presidential election.