Business Insider reports that Twitter announced Oct. 26 that it was banning advertisements from the Russian news agencies RT and Sputnik. "This decision was based on the retrospective work we've been doing around the 2016 U.S. election and the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government," the company wrote on a blog post. RT, or Russia Today, responded by publishing what it called the “full,” “multi-million dollar advertising proposal” from Twitter ahead of the election last year. RT says it turned down that pitch. In September, Twitter said RT spent $274,100 on 1,823 promoted tweets that targeted the U.S. in 2016. Twitter said it would take the estimated $1.9 million that RT paid for advertising since 2011 and use it to, “support external research into the use of Twitter in civic engagement and elections, including use of malicious automation and misinformation, with an initial focus on elections and automation.” In related news, on Oct. 28, Twitter permanently banned longtime Donald Trump adviser and self-proclaimed political “agent provocateur” Roger Stone after a series of messages threatening CNN journalists the night before. Now Stone, who has been banned temporarily before for other insensitive remarks, told Politico, that he had spoken with “prominent telecommunication attorneys” and that “the battle against free speech has just begun.” Twitter has not banned others who have made malicious remarks on the social media service, including the president of the United States.