No one can tell Russian bots from average trolls on Twitter, and that's a very bad thing

Twitter's decision to simply delete the tweets of accounts it says are part of a Russian-linked propaganda bot army has proven to be really short-sighted because, well, it turns out that those tweets are really similar to your average Twitter troll. And telling the difference is a crucial, if difficult, task that the average user needs to be able to do in order to operate more safely on the platform.

Look no further than the @TEN_GOP account, assumed by most Twitter users to have been an account associated with the Tennessee GOP. It was cited numerous times by major mainstream news outlets throughout the 2016 presidential campaign and, yet, was ultimately determined to be one of the many offending accounts.  Read more...