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“#Azov militants deserve to be killed, but they deserve death by hanging, not by firing squad, because they are not real soldiers.” The Russian Embassy in the UK tweeted., in English, on the day of the fatal explosion. Echoing the long-standing Russian talking point of equating Ukrainians with Nazis, Twitter ended with the hashtag #StopNaziUkraine.
In response to user outcry, Twitter blocked the tweet from being shared behind a warning account, but both the tweet and the Russian Embassy UK account remained on the platform in the public interest. Google-owned YouTube later removed the video linked to the tweet.
The tweet, and the response from tech platforms, shows how Russian propaganda and anti-Ukrainian hate has proliferated on international social media platforms nearly six months into the war, even as those platforms have taken various steps to limit it. While tech giants including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok have succeeded in undermining access to major Russian state media outlets in the face of partial European sanctions, a new study highlights blind spots in their efforts. And he called on the Ukrainian authorities to understand and practice Russian strategies.
Since the start of the war, Russian embassy accounts around the world have received more engagement on Facebook and Twitter than they did before the February 24 Russian invasion., According to a new report from the nonpartisan research group Advance Democracy. On Facebook, those accounts have found ways to copy and embed videos from Russian propaganda-sanctioned state media accounts, such as the state-run Russia Today, instead of linking to them.
Such loopholes make major U.S. tech platforms a vehicle for Russian propaganda, including exposing Ukrainians as Nazis, that might otherwise have no place in Western media.
“Russia is well aware of the vulnerability of the laws of some media platforms,” ​​said George Dubinsky, Ukraine’s deputy minister of digital transformation. Now we have a media war.
As of April, Twitter spokeswoman Elizabeth Busby said the company “does not promote or recommend government accounts that limit access to free information and are in conflict with governments,” including Russian embassy accounts. According to those rules, the company does not recommend Russian Embassy accounts on domestic lines, and also includes accounts that provide additional context.
Facebook did not respond to requests for comment.
Dubinsky said Russia had been searching for its strategy since the beginning of the war. To damage the reputation of Ukraine and to prevent Western countries from supporting it. Its proxies, including the Kremlin and Russian embassies; They are actively involved in spreading fake news in Africa and the Middle East. The country’s online strategy includes both using state-controlled media as key talking points and using bots or automated social media accounts to parrot and amplify them.
Almost six years after Russia used social media to interfere in the US election, As the technology industry’s content moderation practices create a global calculus, the world’s most valuable companies are still struggling to keep up with the flood of propaganda. According to an Early Democracy study, Russian embassy accounts are breaking some of the platform’s rules and helping to promote pro-Russia narratives.
“Russia denied that an invasion was planned in the days leading up to the invasion, and has continued to spread propaganda and disinformation since the invasion began,” the report said.
While the Western media tend to view Russian claims with skepticism except in high-profile cases, social media allows Russia to reach a global audience with unfiltered, and sometimes malicious, propaganda. That includes claims that Ukrainian victims are “crisis actors” by producing fake images of suffering. Ukrainians are responsible for massacring their own civilians; And in any case, the real villains are the Ukrainian “Nazis”.
Other influential Russian online propaganda efforts included pushing the idea that Ukraine was developing bioweapons. blaming Ukraine for grain shortages; And Ukraine’s corruption means weapons sent from allies fall into the wrong hands.
Larisa Doroshenko, a postdoctoral scholar at Northeastern University who studies disinformation, said Russia is working to spread such messages in Africa and other parts of the global south.
I think it’s probably a step in the right direction against Russian state media and propaganda at the beginning of the war when all Western social media platforms took a stronger stance than before. She said. What they don’t realize is that the distribution of this information is more subtle and more creative than having an official account and posting from that account.
According to Advanced Democracy research, tweets from Russian embassy accounts are being liked or retweeted 279 times, up 240 percent from before the Russian invasion. They found a similar jump on Facebook, where the average response, comment or share on an embassy account post rose 108 percent after the raid.
In a Facebook post in April that garnered more than 700 likes, the Russian embassy in Indonesia shared a timeline that claims Russia is not responsible for an apparent massacre of civilians in the Bucha area of ​​Kiev, weeks after officials identified 458 dead. Russian invasion. Almost all are known to be civilians and details of each case are currently under investigation.
Advance Democracy Research also found that Russia has taken steps to circumvent Western protections against social media companies for propaganda and state-controlled media.
As of 2020, Meta – the corporate parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – It added labels to media outlets under state editorial control, such as RT. But the company didn’t use warnings when Russian embassy accounts directly embedded RT videos into posts.
In an April 26 post, the Russian Embassy in Australia shared a video on its Facebook page saying “no signs of mass graves” near the southern port city of Maripol. Satellite images provided to The Washington Post by the company Maxar Technologies show rows of graves in a Russian-held village 12 miles west of the city that Ukrainian officials say are evidence of war crimes against civilians.
In other instances, the embassy instructed users of its accounts to follow strict content moderation rules on social media platforms. The Facebook page of the Russian Embassy in Malta announced in a statement in March that it had opened a channel on Telegram., The messaging app has become an important communication channel for Russians and Ukrainians. Later that month, a similar post on the Facebook page of the Russian Embassy in Indonesia called on users to follow another new Telegram channel.
The report found at least 26 channels linked to Russian embassies on Telegram, more than 80 percent of which were created after the February 24 raid. In total, they have over 50,000 subscribers. Telegram did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
The evolution of Russian propaganda techniques online was inevitable, and global tech companies can’t be expected to perfect every protest account or post globally, said Cathy Harbaugh, CEO of Civic Technology Consulting and former director of public policy at Facebook. But that doesn’t mean they can’t do better, she added.
“It’s one thing to say that this is our policy. That’s what we want to do,” Harbaugh said, referring to the platforms’ efforts to label Russian state media and limit its access during wartime. “It’s another thing to build algorithms and classifiers and knowledge and people to find that content and take the action you want.”
But Harbat added that there’s also reason for tech companies to be wary of overreaching when it comes to restricting the government or state media from countries that have fallen.
It may seem too obvious to the Russians that we should do this. But when will India start doing that? For Brazil, when are you going to start doing that for other places? It’s one of those slippery slopes that worries me about where tech platforms have been in the overall foreign policy battle that’s happening around the world.
The U.S. sanctions bar major Russian state media from receiving U.S. advertising dollars, but sanctions experts say the government’s move to clarify what responsibility tech companies have for removing accounts or posts linked to banned entities does little. Facebook, YouTube and TikTok blocked Russian state media in Europe shortly after the invasion, under pressure from European regulators, a move that quickly reduced online viewership, according to a Post investigation.
Northeastern University’s Doroshenko added that there are good reasons why tech platforms shouldn’t completely block Russian embassy accounts. There are Russians living in countries around the world, and they have legal reasons to write with their embassies, and vice versa. But she says the platforms could be more proactive and responsive to ensure those embassy accounts don’t become bogus and war propaganda vehicles.
Ukrainian officials are concerned that tech companies’ well-meaning content moderation efforts are preventing their own war messages from getting out. Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation sent Meta a letter last month warning of a “full campaign” to block the country’s opinion leaders, bloggers and activists on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
The ministry has been reporting to META when it believes content has been mistakenly downloaded, and in most cases META will reinstate it after it is found to have been removed in error, the letter said. The minister warned that “the main problem is the quality of the average process” and called on META’s president of international affairs, Nick Clegg, to launch a review of the process. Meta did not respond to a request for comment.
Dubinsi said the ministry has yet to receive a formal response from Meta, but said they would be in regular contact with the company. The Ukrainian government wants Meta to move quickly and also reevaluate how it handles photos of Russian destruction in Ukraine, he said.
“Can you imagine a situation where you live in a war, your house is destroyed and you have no right to publish anything about it?” he said. “Of course we have to show the truth now.”
Dubinsky said the persistence of the propaganda underscores the need for Western nations to unite against disinformation.
“At least they have some rules of war in kinetic warfare,” he said. “In [the] In the media sphere, nothing is off limits. …At least we should be united with Western governments and companies [the] Media sphere and develop some clear rules.
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