War in Ukraine: social media platforms’ measures [wrap-up]
The pan-European unity regarding measures and sanctions against Russia, with the aim of stopping the war, and the strong wave of support from nations around the world, has also forced social media platforms to align with the general climate and impose measures to limit propaganda, protect citizens, but also to limit Russian state-owned media’s monetization.
Meta has established a special operation center with Russian and Ukrainian speakers to monitor content trends and also added new warning labels when users are about to share war related images that are detected to be over one year old. Meta is estimated to have 70 m users in Russia and 24 m users in Ukraine
Meta has also announced that it will restrict access to content from Russian state-affiliated media outlets RT and Sputnik in response to requests from EU officials, as well as stop ads monetization for state-own Russian media.
Facebook’s head of security Nathaniel Gleicher said: “We are now prohibiting Russian state media from running ads or monetizing on our platform anywhere in the world. We also continue to apply labels to additional Russian state media.
Twitter said:” We’re proactively reviewing Tweets to detect platform manipulation (or other inauthentic behavior) and taking enforcement action against synthetic and manipulated media that presents a false or misleading depiction of what’s happening.”
“We’re actively monitoring vulnerable high-profile accounts, including journalists, activists, and government officials and agencies to mitigate any attempts at a targeted takeover or manipulation”, Twitter said adding:
“We’re temporarily pausing advertisements in Ukraine and Russia to ensure critical public safety information is elevated and ads don’t detract from it.”
Twitter said it will comply with the EU sanctions on Russia Today and Sputnik.
Apple joined companies cutting Russian connections by announcing it is halting all product sales in the country and limiting access to Apple services.
Google’s YouTube shut down the accounts used by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, the platform has confirmed. A number of channels linked to the separatists were inaccessible with YouTube saying this is “due to non-compliance with YouTube community rules”.
YouTube also announced that it is suspending ad monetization of several Russian state media channels including RT. The company also initially limited recommendations to those channels and blocked them entirely in Ukraine at the request of the Ukrainian government, but proceed today into blocking them across Europe.
Google said the company has removed Russian state-funded publishers such as RT from its news-related features, including the Google News search tool.
Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, we’re blocking YouTube channels connected to RT and Sputnik across Europe, effective immediately. It’ll take time for our systems to fully ramp up. Our teams continue to monitor the situation around the clock to take swift action.
— Google Europe (@googleeurope) March 1, 2022
Google also confirmed that live traffic data for Ukraine were deactivated in Google Maps. The decision to disable live traffic was made in collaboration with local authorities, and it was done to protect communities.
TikTok has now geo-blocked content from Russian state-affiliated media outlets, Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik, for users in the EU, after the organizations were hit with sanctions by the EU.. Those outside the EU can still access this content, a TikTok spokeswoman confirmed on Monday.
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