Twitter Bans Ads From Kremlin Media Outlets

Politico reports:

Twitter said Thursday it’s dropping all ads from Kremlin-funded English-language media outlets RT and Sputnik, as the company prepares to face lawmakers next week over Russian use of social media to interfere with the 2016 election.

“This decision was based on the retrospective work we’ve been doing around the 2016 U.S. election and the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government,” the company wrote in a blog post. The Twitter accounts of RT and Sputnik, however, remain active.

A report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in January called RT the “Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet,” which was part of a media apparatus that “made increasingly favorable comments” about Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign “while consistently offering negative coverage” of Hillary Clinton.