Twitter Sends Out a Lame Survey Asking Users How It's Doing on That Whole Russia Thing

Twitter has been under fire for months over Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election on its platform. Earlier this year, the company emailed 1.4 million users to let them know if they had interacted at all with accounts Twitter had identified as being part of said Russian efforts. Now comes its latest move in the Sorry, We’re Sorry, We’re Trying to Remove Foreign Influence of US Elections on Our Site saga: sending out a very lame survey to users who received the previous notification asking how they think the company is doing on fixing the problem.

In January, Twitter said it would “be sending a short survey to a small group of people who received our notification to gain feedback on this process.” Now, that survey—which Splinter obtained from someone who received it—is here. In it, Twitter asked users whether they know about Russian government activities on its platform:

And whether they were aware that Twitter is doing something about it:

The survey then asked whether users felt Twitter was being “transparent” about malicious activities, and whether it was doing enough about it:

When asked if the company would be making the results of the survey public, a Twitter spokesperson declined to comment. Transparency! Strongly Agree!

This is par for the course. Back in October, Twitter promised a new “transparency center” to allow users to trace the source of political ads on the site more easily. As Splinter reported earlier this year, that transparency center has yet to emerge, and Twitter also failed to answer questions at the time about the processes behind its “ads without profiles” feature, which could potentially be used by foreign governments to pose as U.S. organizations.

Some of Twitter’s users did not appreciate receiving the survey and tweeted their displeasure with being asked about the whole Russia thing, which is REALLY upsetting so stop mentioning it!!!

I, too, look forward to Twitter’s survey on its efforts to silence conservatives, a real thing it definitely does.