Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube remove Anti-Ukrain War Propaganda
Conflict between Russia and Ukraine has created propaganda on Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube
The Russian and Ukrainian conflict continues to create controversy on social media. Popular social media platforms Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are choosing to block Russia and its affiliated states on their platforms. In these lately weeks as the conflicts between neighboring states develop so does the anti-Ukrainian propaganda.
As a response, on Friday Facebook takes the steps of denying Russian users access to the Russian state-controlled media within Europe. Both Facebook and Twitter have already removed “covert influence operations” accounts from their platforms.
Including Russia, these anti-Ukraine groups are located in Donbas, south-eastern Ukraine. As well as in Crimea, South Ukraine. To illustrate, Russian groups were formed a few weeks after the invasion of Ukraine. The objective is to promote propaganda campaigns that focus on anti-Ukraine talking points.
According to Facebook “it was taking these steps as it had “received requests from a number of Governments and the EU” regarding Russian state-controlled media.”
In Addition, these anti groups have gone beyond to add fuel to this cold war, giving the world false updates and narratives. Facebook released that the first group utilized websites to release their agenda. While the second used computer-generated faces to bolster the credibility of fake columnists across several platforms, including Instagram. As the second group, they strategically hacked accounts.
Alexei Nikolsky/TASS/via Getty Images
In addition, disinformation experts have speculated that Russia may continue to alter the reputation of Ukraine.
Russia has an estimate of 70 million active users that and according to Putin will be “partially restricting” access to the social media network.”
Nathaniel Gleicher, Meta’s head of security policy stated that the purpose is to “seed stories across the internet that Ukraine isn’t doing well” by “pretending to be journalists based in Kyiv.” There is a heavy understanding that Russia is actively attempting to destroy Ukraine.
On March 1, Twitter stated that labels will be placed on Russian government-affiliated media website. This will help reduce such content on the platform. Yoel Roth, head of Site Integrity at Twitter announced that more than 45,000 links are being shared to Russian state-affiliated media outlets per day.
Twitter and Facebook have been facing difficulties with countries booted off of the local internet entirely. These platforms have found themselves struggling to keep up with the demands placed by a country’s authoritarian government. Governments are pressuring them to censor content that is not acceptable in their country,
Obviously, there is no simple solutions to conflicts like this, due to the fact social media is very new and politically underdeveloped.