Did Twitter's CEO retweet a 'Russian troll' account claiming to be a Black Lives Matter advocate?

Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey reportedly retweeted posts from an account claiming to be a Black Lives Matter advocate that was allegedly run by a Russian "troll factory" in March last year. The Russian-linked account, @Crystal1Johnson, claimed to be an African-American woman and posted mostly about positive, uplifting stories, The Daily Beast first reported.

"Rihanna collects her Humanitarian of the Year award from Harvard. She kicked off #WomensHistoryMonth with a bang!" one of the tweets retweeted by Dorsey read, according to the caching service Archive.is.

Another post retweeted by Jack a week later read: "Nobody is born a racist. This picture is so sweet! Teach your children to judge others by the kind of person they are inside."

However, the now-suspended account was found to be a Russian-linked troll farm account, the non-government Russian agency RBC reported. The Daily Beast said it is currently independently confirmed whether @Crystal1Johnson is a Kremlin-backed account.

Besides posting about issues surrounding black identity in the US and the Black Lives Matter movement, the account also posted some politically divisive messages including one in May that read: "Clinton's True Face.. KKK leader claims he gave $20K to Hillary Clinton campaign."

The account was permanently suspended in August.

Earlier this week, it was reported that Trump's campaign staffers, members of his family, some officials and even celebrities shared tweets from a popular fake account that claimed to belong to the Tennessee Republican Party called @TEN_GOP.

Former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone, senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, Trump's son Donald Trump Jr, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and his son Michael Flynn Jr retweeted the account before it was permanently suspended in August. Others who also engaged with the account include Nicki Minaj, James Woods along with media personalities Anne Coulter and Chris Hayes.

The revelations come as Twitter continues to face criticism over its slow response to curb false content and fake accounts on its platform, the misuse of its platform by Russia's influence and misinformation campaign during the 2016 election and its limited "inadequate" disclosure to congressional investigators.

After Facebook admitted it sold $100,000 (£75,648) worth of politically divisive ads to inauthentic accounts linked to Russia, Twitter said it found 201 Russian accounts on its own site that were connected to the Facebook ads. It also added that Kremlin-backed news site RT bought $274,100 worth of ads on Twitter last year.

Multiple congressional committees along with special counsel Robert Mueller are currently investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible ties between Trump's campaign and the Kremlin.

Following its briefing to Congress in September about Russian meddling on its platform to influence the election, Democratic Senator Mark Warner slammed the company saying their response was "very disappointing" and "inadequate on every level".

Warner said the company's presentation showed "an enormous lack of understanding from the Twitter team of how serious this issue is, the threat it poses to democratic institutions and again begs many more questions than they offered".

Twitter's Sean Edgett and Facebook's general counsel Colin Stretch are set to testify before the House and Senate Intelligence committees in hearings on 1 November regarding how their platforms were used to influence the election. Google has also been invited to the hearing.

Representative Adam B Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said earlier: "I think there is a great deal more that we need to know, a great deal more that Twitter needs to find out. At the same time, I don't think we have more than scratched the surface of our understanding of how the Russians may have used that platform."