OREANDA-NEWS. The campaign before the US presidential election in 2016, allegedly conducted by the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency (IRA) on Twitter, was larger, more coordinated and more effective than previously thought, said cyber security company Symantec. "The operation was carefully planned, often the accounts were registered several months before their use and long before the presidential election of 2016 in the US. The average time between creating an account and the first tweet was 177 days", follows an article published on the company's website.

The Symantec study, which analyzed almost 3.9 thousand accounts and 10 million tweets, also showed that the most quoted account scored more than 6 million retweets. However, only 1,850 of them were made IRA-related accounts. "This means that many of the retweets could come from real Twitter users", the company said. It's noted that the bulk of accounts disguised as regional news channels and political organizations.

In addition, Symantec found that, although most of the accounts were automated, some accounts were set up and managed manually, there were a lot of hypnotic publications such as “posting original content or a slight change in the wording of reprinted content, presumably in an attempt to make them more authentic and reduce the risk of eliminating them". “The main task of these manipulations was to sow discord, as there were anti-republican and anti-democratic publications. He wasn't limited to the online sphere. In addition, accounts were found, the funds from which went to the organization of rallies and demonstrations in the United States“,- said in a statement.

The US media calls the "Internet Research Agency" a "trolley factory." The Internet Research Agency appears in the investigation by the US special prosecutor for the Russian case, Robert Muller, and is on the US sanctions list for allegedly interfering with the 2016 US presidential election.