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The Twitter Files
Partly confirmed

Twitter Files: Hamilton 68's 'Russian bot' list

Taibbi reported that Twitter staff had found the Hamilton 68 dashboard's roughly 600 'Russian influence' accounts were mostly ordinary Americans, Canadians and Britons. News outlets had widely cited the dashboard as tracking Russian bots. The group behind it says it never called the accounts bots or Russian.

Jan 27, 2023
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Whose side it served: Democrats

The dashboard's 'Russian bot' framing was used mostly to discredit Trump-aligned and right-leaning online activity.

What the record shows

Hamilton 68, funded by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), was headed by former FBI official Clint Watts. It tracked about 600 Twitter accounts but never published the list. Twitter reverse-engineered it and found the accounts were 'neither strongly Russian nor strongly bots,' Taibbi reported. Yoel Roth wrote that real people were being 'unilaterally labeled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse.' Taibbi said many news outlets cited the dashboard, and Insider later corrected three posts that described it as tracking only Russian bots.

In their words

“neither strongly Russian nor strongly bots”— Twitter executives' internal finding (per Taibbi) · source
“unilaterally labeled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse”— Yoel Roth, Twitter trust and safety (internal) · source
“not because they were labelled by analysts as being a bot or even Russian”— Alliance for Securing Democracy · source
The other side

ASD said accounts were chosen by network analysis because they amplified Russian state messaging, 'not because they were labelled' as bots or Russian, and that its data was often misrepresented by the press. Commentators called Taibbi's 'fraud' charge hyperbolic.

Sources

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