Enlarge / This image was the profile banner of one of the accounts allegedly run by the Internet Research Agency, the organization that ran social media "influence campaigns" in Russia, Germany, Ukraine, and the US dating back to 2009. (credit: A Russian Troll) Twitter has released a data store of posts from 3,841 accounts that have been identified as being connected to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Russian "troll factory" that used Twitter and Facebook to conduct an "influence campaign" aimed at causing political turmoil during the 2016 US presidential election as well as undermining the political process in other countries, including Germany and Ukraine.