Why are promoted tweets in Russian?
November 12, 2019 3:20 AM   Subscribe

Why is Twitter sending me promoted tweets in Russian?

I've only ever tweeted in English from within the US. I don't tweet about Russia, Ukraine, or US presidential stuff, or anything remotely like that. The closest I get to that is maybe that I follow some fairly mainstream US journalists and activists who are vocal feminists and anti-racists, but I'm a drop in the bucket on their lists of followers.

Yesterday I noticed a promoted tweet in my feed was an ad for Chanel, partly in English and partly in Russian. The next promoted tweet was an ad for Toyota, everything but the username in Russian. The third promoted tweet was from a Russian Telecom, the username in Latin alphabet but the rest in Russian.

When I Google for how this could be happening, all I see is info about Russian trolls. But my understanding is that trolls tweet from individual accounts. These are promoted tweets from major companies. When I run the Russian text through Google Translate, it's just an ad for the company's product/service. How could this be happening?
posted by Former Congressional Representative Lenny Lemming to Technology (3 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Check what Twitter thinks you're interested in and see if it's decided you're Russian or like Russian things?
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:30 AM on November 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


Have you been on any new wifi networks lately? Or using a VPN? At my office, Twitter thinks I'm in Nigeria or Hong Kong, depending on which network I'm connected to.
posted by Glier's Goetta at 5:40 AM on November 12, 2019 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: Twitter did think I was interested in a couple of people connected to the Russia investigation, presumably as topics in the news, so I unchecked those.

I haven't been using a vpn or any different networks. Just home (I haven't reconfigured it lately) and work (of course I never know what the IT department at work is up to).

I dug up my old Twitter login, which still works, and its promoted tweets are in English. Only my main Twitter login still has promoted tweets in Russian.
posted by Former Congressional Representative Lenny Lemming at 12:54 PM on November 12, 2019


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