Here’s what we know so far about Hamilton 68, a Russian online influencer that was exposed by the ‘Twitter Files.

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• An "Twitter Files” drop recently revealed deep concern among Twitter executives over a database that claimed it could track Russian propaganda in "near-real time."
• Hamilton 68, a now defunct database was widely cited in media outlets like Insider before it was closed down in 2018.
• Conservatives accuse it of being left-leaning, but its creators claim that the dashboard's data was frequently misunderstood or misinterpreted.

Emails that were leaked from select Twitter executives show internal conversations between Twitter executives. This raises questions about the existence of a large database that tracks Russia's influence online campaigns.

The controversy erupted in January, when Matt Taibbi, a journalist, published a lengthy Twitter thread within the "Twitter Files" series. This ongoing series documents Twitter's internal moderation discussions.

The email contained photos of emails in the which Yoel Roth (a former Twitter executive) expressed concern about Hamilton 68. This was a public dashboard that used Twitter to track hundreds of accounts and monitor the spread pro-Russian propaganda online. However, neither Roth nor Taibbi are open to discussing the issue. The architects of the tracker also declined to provide the list of accounts that it had tracked.

Hamilton 68 launched in 2017 by the Alliance for Securing Democracy. Its creators stated that Hamilton 68 "seeks out to expose the effects online influence networks and inform public about themes and content being promoted for Americans through a near-real-time look at Russian propaganda, disinformation efforts online."

According to Taibbi's thread, Twitter executives began to doubt Hamilton 68 in the months following the dashboard's launch.

Taibbi uploaded one photo in which Roth, the then head of Trust and Safety at Twitter, claimed that he used internal analytics to reverse engineer the list of 600 accounts the dashboard tracked. According to his analysis, Hamilton 68 was falsely accused of being Russian bots by a group of right-leaning, legitimate accounts.

It is unclear which accounts made it on the list, and what the reasons were for their inclusion.

Here are the facts:

Hamilton 68 claimed that Hamilton did it

J.M., the dashboard's co-creator, said that it was initially created to show "the hashtags and links being amplified through Russian influence operations". Berger, who is currently a researcher at VOXPol, studying violent online extremism told Insider in a statement.

The dashboard claimed to track three broad categories of Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence operations: overtly pro-Russian and Russian government-affiliated accounts like RT and Sputnik; bots and human accounts run by Russian troll factories; and accounts from humans around the world "who amplify pro-Russian themes either knowingly or unknowingly," according to an archived version of the website from August 2017.

Now, the third category is the center of controversy. Taibbi and others claimed Hamilton 68 "barely" had any Russians and "simply collected some mostly real, mostly American accounts and described their organic conversations to be Russian scheming."

Although the Alliance for Securing Democracy declined comment for Insider's story it did publicly defend the Hamilton 68 dashboard and push back against some of the criticism. It argued that the inclusion American and other non Russian accounts was justified to see how they were propagandized by Russia or repeated Russian propaganda.

Since then, the think tank published a "factsheet" that addresses common criticisms. It explained that the dashboard was designed to analyze content from accounts that "reliably amplified Russian propagandism and disinformation, wittingly and unwittingly."

Hamilton 68 contained accounts belonging to Americans, "not because they were labeled as bots or Russians by analysts but because the analytic methods used identified them as being part of a network which either promoted or engaged in Russian propaganda targeting American audiences," ASD stated.

The organization also acknowledged that Hamilton 68's data was frequently "misunderstood and misrepresented." This led to headlines such as "After Florida School Shootings, Russian 'Bot Army Pounced" or "The Russian Bots Are Coming." This Bipartisan Duo Is On It. Insider has updated three posts that incorrectly stated that the dashboard was only tracking Russian bots.

Taibbi and others have criticised Hamilton 68 for not making public the complete and comprehensive list of approximately 600 Twitter accounts that made up the dashboard.

ASD and Berger did not respond to Insider's request for the Hamilton 68 trackable accounts list. Requests to see the reverse engineered list were not answered by Roth or Taibbi.

Berger said that the creators of the dashboard "intentionally resisted making any descriptions of individual users, including whether they were aware they were interfacing with a networked operation of influence."

He said that the accounts were kept secret to prevent others from making such characterizations. "We believed, and still believe, that it would be irresponsible for us to reveal the user list and try to characterize the motives and opinions of individual users."

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Hamilton's response on Twitter 68

Taibbi's thread contains multiple photos of emails in the which Roth, who led Twitter's efforts against propaganda on Twitter, castigated Hamilton.

He also accused the dashboard of calling "a bunch right-leaning account" "Russian bots", and he criticised Hamilton 68 for not releasing publicly the list of accounts it had tracked. According to Taibbi's photo, he wrote: "It's so strange and self-selecting and they're so unwilling be transparent and defend their selection that we need to just call it out on the bullshit It is."

Roth claimed that the accounts Hamilton 68 tracked were neither strongly Russian nor bots after he reverse-engineered them. Roth also claimed that the dashboard's methodology was "deeply flawed" according to another photo. He said there was an "major unmet chance to try and educate our comms partners and gov partners about flaws with tools such as Hamilton."

Hamilton 68's creators and experts noted that it did not claim to track Russian accounts. Bots and automated accounts were only a small percentage of the 600 accounts it tracked.

Caroline Orr, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland, wrote recently that the purpose of the study was not to determine the tweets of individual accounts, but to assess the network temperature in which pro-Russian propaganda, disinformation, and propaganda circulated regularly. Your account could have been flagged if it was engaging with Russian proxy sites such as SouthFront or RT, Sputnik, TASS.

Insider discovered several American accounts that Taibbi reported were included in the dashboard. Their tweets from 2017-2019 had been embedded in RT articles and Sputnik articles. The dashboard most likely considered them to be "part a network that either encouraged or engaged in Russian propaganda."

Hamilton 68 was shut down by the Alliance for Securing Democracy shortly after the 2018 midterm election. However, it appears that the Alliance for Securing Democracy has taken steps to address the main criticisms of its original dashboard.

Hamilton 2.0 was introduced by the organization in September 2019. It is a dashboard that provides "a summary analysis on the narratives, topics, and government officials from Russia, China, and Iran, as well as state-funded media on Twitter and YouTube. State-sponsored news sites and official press releases.

The key difference between the dashboards is that Hamilton 2.0 includes a public list of accounts. Every account can be linked directly to the Russian, Chinese and Iranian governments, diplomats and state-sponsored media outlets.

ASD stated that the new dashboard "displays outputs of sources that we directly attribute to Russian, Chinese, and Iranian governments or their news and information channels."

The statement added that "These channels and account often engage with topics hashtags URLs and people that are not in any way associated with the Russian, Chinese or Iranian governments." Therefore, it would be wrong to label anyone or anything on the dashboard as state-backed propaganda without further analysis.

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By: ssheth@businessinsider.com (Sonam Sheth,Michelle Mark)
Title: Here’s what we know about Hamilton 68, the Russian online influence tracker called into question by the ‘Twitter Files’
Sourced From: www.businessinsider.com/what-is-hamilton-68-russian-online-influence-tracker-2023-2
Published Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2023 18:04:51 +0000

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