Twitter helped spread hoax that #WalkAway was ‘Russian influence’

Actor Brandon Straka launched the #WalkAway Facebook group on May 26, 2018, releasing a video stating that he was leaving the Democrat Party and urging others to leave as well. On January 8, 2021, over 500,000 accounts associated with the movement were deleted by Facebook. The group had been labeled as being Russian influence.

A firm by the name of New Knowledge published a tweet on July 1, 2018, stating, "The #walkaway campaign is an excellent example of how organic discussions about divisive topics are co-opted by domestic extremists," and that the campaign was being "amplified by foreign actors for maximum disruption."

According to Taibbi, New Knowledge cited the Hamilton 68 dashboard, stating that the hashtag was "by far the top hashtag amplified by the network of Russia-linked Twitter accounts." New Knowledge’s CEO Jonathan Morgan designed the dashboard.

A small percentage of accounts were found to be fake, and the news spread from there to places like the Washington Post, CNN, and other outlets.

Carlos Monje, who is now an aide for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg but previously worked for Twitter, wrote on July 12, 2018, to fellow executives at the company, "We’re getting some incoming qs on #walkaway from House Intel."

Analysts at the company concluded that the campaign was real, writing back that "the majority of users that are using #WalkAway are legitimate users," adding that "surprisingly, there’s only a small amount of fake engagements."

Former Twitter Trust and Safety Chief Yoel Roth wrote, "On the whole, while there are a very, very small number of accounts tweeting with this hashtag that look suspicious (several hundred out of ~200k overall), the overall volume... seems legitimate and US-based."

Roth had previously said that the Hamilton 68 method was "bullsh*t," and was not tracking "Russian influence" accounts but rather regular people.

Monje said he would bring the news to Congress, adding, "We owe [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] a call about it."

"However, Twitter neither pushed back hard with Congress nor went public," Taibbi wrote, later adding, " Had it spoken out before, #WalkAway and others would not have faced accusations of 'foreign' collusion."

Executives had spoken about setting the record straight with Congress and Hamilton's sponsor the Alliance for Securing Democracy to try to "reorient" the parties to more "accurate" statements.

On October 11, Twitter received a "massive" spreadsheet from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee of around 38,000 tweets associated with "WalkAway and Similar hashtags.

"Tired of saying no to influential politicians, one Twitter official urged they 'confirm’ the requests, saying: 'We would love to be able to confirm this and land a positive example of our partnership to silence the… critiques” about refusing too many removal demands,'" Taibbi wrote.

By December 2018, the campaign had been branded as being "Russian-affiliated." On December 19, 2018, a report revealed that New Knowledge was involved in a scheme to funnel fake Russian accounts to the campaign of a Senate candidate.

"Despite the collapse and exposure of New Knowledge and (eventually) Hamilton 68, accusations of Russian ties to #WalkAway stuck. No press outlet has apologized, nor did anyone at Twitter ever tell Straka or others accused by Hamilton about the dubious claims," Taibbi wrote.