Twitter is saying nyet to Russian propaganda.

The social platform announced on Thursday it’s banning advertising from pro-Kremlin news outlets RT and Sputnik, stemming from its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

“We did not come to this decision lightly, and are taking this step now as part of our ongoing commitment to help protect the integrity of the user experience on Twitter,” the company said in a blog post.

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Twitter also pointed to an investigation from the “U.S. intelligence community” earlier this year, indicating RT and Sputnik attempted to “interfere with and disrupt the 2016 Presidential election, which is not something we want.”

While being banned from advertising, Sputnik and RT (which rebranded itself from “Russia Today” in 2009) are allowed to continue operating their accounts.

Twitter has pulled in $1.9 million in advertising from RT since 2011, including about $275,000 in U.S.-based advertising last year. The company said it’ll be donating the money to “support external research into the use of Twitter in civic engagement and elections.”

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In a post quickly following Twitter’s announcement, RT pushed back against the company’s ban, calling it “absolutely groundless and greatly-misleading.”

“Twitter representatives pitched to RT a large-sum advertising proposal,” the state-owned outlet said in its post. “It was developed around promoting RT’s US election coverage on the micro-blogging platform. This proposal was eventually declined by RT.”

Last month, Twitter told the Senate and House intelligence committees it had “took action” against 201 Russian troll-farms peddling fake news. The company added it’s updating its tools to weed out fake news, including automation to detect “non-human activity patterns” and spam accounts connected to a single source.

6 Tech Giants Shaking Up News, From Jeff Bezos to Laurene Powell Jobs (Photos)

Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.
Jeff Bezos – Washington Post

The Amazon founder purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million in cash. President Trump has called the paper the “Amazon Washington Post.”

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Chris Hughes - The New Republic

The Facebook co-founder purchased The New Republic in 2012, becoming executive chairman and publisher. However, he sold the venerable political magazine to Win McCormack in 2016, saying he "underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate."

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Pierre Omidyar - The Intercept

The eBay founder is a well-known philanthropist who created First Look Media, a journalism venture behind The Intercept. Inspired by Edward Snowden's leaks. Omidyar teamed up with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras to launch the website “dedicated to the kind of reporting those disclosures required: fearless, adversarial journalism.”

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Peter Thiel

The PayPal co-founder doesn’t own a news organization, but he makes this list because he essentially ended one -- Gawker -- proving once again the power of an angry billionaire. Thiel secretly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker Media because he was upset that the website once outed him as gay. Hogan won the defamation lawsuit against the site that sent its parent company into bankruptcy, and Gawker.com is no longer operating.

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Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook

OK, so Facebook isn’t technically a news organization… yet. However, the company is preparing to launch its much-anticipated lineup of original content later this summer, and there are also signs that it's on the verge of becoming an even bigger media platform.

Campbell Brown, Head of News Partnerships at Facebook, confirmed last week it’s developing a subscription service for publishers willing to post articles directly to Facebook Instant Articles, rather than their native websites.

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Tech is increasingly intertwined with news, for better or worse

Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.

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