Russia’s war in Ukraine has launched protests the world over and among those protests are increasing calls for Big Tech companies like Google and Facebook to remove disinformation from their websites and counter Russian propaganda flowing from state-backed outlets online.
Over the weekend, the president of the European Commission announced plans to ban the “Kremlin’s media machine” from the European Union. proposing prohibitions on Russian state-owned outlets Russia Today and Sputnik News, as well as their subsidiaries.
Heads of state from neighboring nations to Ukraine including Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania called on the tech companies to move swiftly. In a letter sent to tech CEOs at Google, Meta (Facebook), YouTube, and Twitter, the prime ministers called for action—like the outright suspension of official Russian government and Belarussian accounts. The leaders called too for adjustments to site algorithms that they argue, would stem the flow of Russian war propaganda while demonetizing nefarious actors online.
By Monday evening, the chief executives are expected to produce a report to the European Commission outlining the steps each entity will take moving forward.
Both Facebook and YouTube have already barred access to RT after Ukraine’s government requested it. Russian state media organizations can no longer run ads on either site alongside self-created content. According to the Financial Times, the head of security policy at Facebook this weekend said the social media company was considering how to process similar throttling requests from other governments.
“We have received requests from a number of Governments and the EU to take further steps in relation to Russian state-controlled media. Given the exceptional nature of the current situation, we will be restricting access to RT and Sputnik across the EU at this time,” Nick Clegg, head of global affairs and communications for Meta.
Meta said it took down about 40 accounts from pro-Russia hackers. Using artificial intelligence to drum up profiles, photos, and posts that appeared to be coming from Kyiv, the Pro-Russia accounts published fake content across a variety of outlets.
Twitter on Monday announced that it would begin labeling tweets that share links to Russian state-affiliated media sites. Such “state-run” labels, according to Twitter’s head of site integrity, Yoel Roth, will also be applied to other state-affiliated media sites in the weeks ahead.
The Associated Press reported on Sunday that analysts reviewing popular social media sites like Twitter and Facebook saw a “sudden and dramatic increase in anti-Ukrainian content” in the days just before the invasion.
On Feb. 14, for example, anti-Ukrainian posts skyrocketed by a mind-boggling 11,000% percent when put up against data from days just before. One analyst told AP:
“When you see an 11,000% increase, you know something is going. No one can know who is doing this behind the scenes. We can only guess.”
Other analysts, like those at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, pored over thousands of articles by Russian state-owned media companies and found big upticks in baseless claims that Ukraine was planning an attack on Russian separatists. Insinuations or claims of Ukrainian aggression were reported by Russian news agencies 50% more in January.
Russia's state-run media used its claim that Ukraine was engaged in “genocide of civilians,” as a precursor to its invasion. Kremlin-backed media also claimed, falsely, that Ukraine used chemical attacks on separatists.
Between social media posts and state-run news, confusion about the reality of events on the ground has reigned. Last week, it was reported by Ukrainian officials that 13 Ukrainian troops stationed on Snake Island in the Black Sea were killed after refusing to surrender to a Russian warship. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the deaths heroic in the aftermath. On Monday, however, the Ukrainian Navy reported the soldiers were “alive and well,” though taken prisoner by Russian forces.
Social media companies have spent billions in recent years to address concerns about disinformation on their sites, but that has ultimately done little to stop the onslaught of bad information or misinformation from surging online.
Fact-checkers at ABC News, for example, recently unwound a disturbing video making the rounds on Telegram. It purported to show a man with his leg blown off after a conflict with Ukrainian soldiers. The man’s leg was blurred from the knee down and a video caption described it as “Ukrainian punishers” keeping up its “genocide.”
Other videos of that same man in that same scene, however, show he was not a victim of war but an amputee. Once the video is unblurred, his prosthetic leg is visible.