Month: April 2022

Twitter has limited content from more than 300 official Russian government accounts, including that of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The accounts will no longer be recommended in timelines, notifications or elsewhere on the site, Twitter said.

The company said it would take action against any country which “restricts access to the open internet while they’re engaged in armed conflict”.

The platform has been severely limited in Russia since war began in Ukraine .

Currently Putin has two official accounts on the social media site: one in Russian and one in English. They have 3.6 million and 1.7 million followers respectively.

Twitter said allowing Russian government officials to post freely on the social media site, whilst simultaneously limiting the platform in Russia “creates a harmful information imbalance”.

As part of Tuesday’s action, content on more than 300 official government accounts will no longer be “recommended or amplified”. This means Twitter’s powerful algorithm will not promote these accounts.

The targeted Russian government accounts include official ministry and embassy profiles, as well as the accounts of high-ranking Russian officials.

The accounts have previously been criticised for spreading misinformation during the Ukraine war, but unlike tweets from Russian state-affiliated media outlets, they have not previously been subject to specific moderation by Twitter.

How Kremlin accounts manipulate Twitter
Twitter confirms it is being restricted in Russia
Ukraine invasion: How the war is being waged online
On 10 March the Russian Embassy in the UK’s official account claimed the bombing of a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol had been faked.

The claim was false. Twitter later removed tweets making the “FAKE” claim.

Last month, a BBC investigation found further misinformation spread by official Russian government accounts, as well as evidence of coordinated activity – using multiple government accounts to drive a particular narrative – which is against Twitter’s rules.

Recent posts claiming civilian killings in the town of Bucha had been staged have also been debunked.

However, Twitter says that it is Russia’s actions in Ukraine, combined with the country’s decision to block and limit social media platforms domestically, that has led to their action.

“When a government that’s engaged in armed conflict is blocking or limiting access to online services within their country, while they themselves continue to use those same services to advance their positions and viewpoints – that creates a harmful information imbalance”, says Yoel Roth, Head of Site Integrity at Twitter.

Twitter says it is applying the rules to any country that limits access to online services while engaging in interstate warfare. But the new rules, which came into force on Tuesday, initially only affect Russian government accounts.

Not ‘tit-for-tat’
Although Twitter is not banned in Russia, the site has been severely slowed down, to the point of inoperability.

However, Twitter says its action was not retaliatory.

“To be clear, this isn’t a ‘tit-for-tat’ policy, where if you block Twitter then you get de-amplified by Twitter – this enforcement will occur whether Twitter is blocked or not,” said Mr Roth.

He added that Twitter will take action on media depicting prisoners of war which have been posted by government or state-affiliated media accounts.

“If we see media that’s published by government or state media accounts that feature prisoners of war, or if the prisoner of war is being subjected to ill treatment, things like violence, humiliation or mockery, we will require the removal of those tweets” he said.

Twitter “de-amplified” Russian state media on the platform – such as Russia Today and Sputnik – on 28 February, four days after the invasion of Ukraine began. The company previously told the BBC the action had led to a “30 percent reduction of the reach of this content”.

However the action was not enforced on official Russian government accounts.

Speaking last month, Tim Graham, a social media analyst at QUT Digital Media Research Centre in Australia, described it as a “loophole” in Twitter’s moderation policies.

“It’s certainly a blind spot in Twitter’s defences against disinformation,” he said.

Facebook users around the world have been waking up to find themselves locked out of their accounts for no apparent reason.

The message many received reads: “Your Facebook account was disabled because it did not follow our Community Standards. This decision can’t be reversed.”

One user told the BBC there was no warning or explanation given.

Parent firm Meta said it was investigating.

In a tweet, Meta’s Andy Stone said: “We’re aware that some users are experiencing issues accessing their Facebook accounts and we are working to resolve them as quickly as possible.”

He did not say how many were affected, or what the issue was.

PR consultant Jen Roberts was one of those to find herself locked out of her account. She told the BBC: “I haven’t posted anything or commented for quite some time, so it’s extremely unlikely that I’ve done anything that could be construed as offensive.”

But, despite not being an avid user, finding her account locked was still upsetting: “All of the images from my university years and family occasions are on Facebook

“I will no longer have access to 15-plus years of content, which is genuinely sad.

“It is also quite stressful not knowing what the issue is, and having no recourse to resolve it. To be given no warning and then no way to access our own data is mindboggling.”

The chief executive of a political consulting firm has responded to a report alleging Meta paid his company to “undermine” TikTok.

Internal emails, apparently seen by the Washington Post, allegedly suggested Targeted Victory’s campaign aimed to show TikTok “as a danger to American children”.

Zac Moffatt tweeted that the Post’s report mischaracterised their work and “key points are simply false”.

The BBC approached Meta for comment.

A spokesperson said: “We believe all platforms, including TikTok, should face a level of scrutiny consistent with their growing success.”

Paper push
The “bare-knuckle” campaign allegedly included placing opinion pieces and letters to the editor in US regional news outlets “promoting dubious stories about alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook”, the Post journalists wrote.

None of the opinion pieces or letters to the editor revealed that a Meta-funded group had been pushing them, the paper added.

In response to the article, Mr Moffat tweeted that: “The story infers that the words of the letters to the editor were not the authors’ own, nor did they know of Meta’s involvement. That is false. They will confirm that.”

In internal emails, the paper claimed, Targeted Victory urged its partners to get stories into local media that linked TikTok to dangerous trends.

“Dream would be to get stories with headlines like ‘From dances to danger: how TikTok has become the most harmful social media space for kids’,” one Targeted Victory staff member allegedly wrote in an email apparently seen by the Post.

Challenges
The paper alleged that Targeted Victory encouraged operatives to amplify reports of dangerous trends linked to TikTok.

This included a purported Devious Licks challenge, which encouraged damage to school property, and reports of a rumoured Slap a Teacher challenge, which an investigation by news site Insider suggested did not in fact exist.

But journalistic investigations, the Post said, suggested that stories about both challenges began to spread on Facebook.

Following publication, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers – a large US teaching union – accused Facebook of fanning the flames of Devious Licks and terrifying “teachers, students and parents across America as a result”.

Those fears were echoed by TikTok itself. In response to the article, the company told the BBC: “We are deeply concerned that the stoking of local media reports on alleged trends that have not been found on the platform could cause real world harm.”

Responding to the article, technology journalist Casey Newton wrote on his newsletter Platformer that the effect went beyond inconvenience, but it risked inspiring people to carry out the purported challenges.

“Even the fact that Meta might have helped to inspire such copycats ought to have been enough to kill this project when it was still being white-boarded,” he wrote.

Mr Moffatt tweeted that The Post itself had reported on the purported TikTok challenges.

Media strategies
Targeted Victory describes itself as “right-of-centre”, but Mr Moffatt said it managed “bipartisan teams”.

In 2016, Mr Moffatt met with Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg as part of a group of high-profile conservative figures following allegations – which the firm denied – that it tampered with its Trending Topics feature, to promote “progressive” views.

Now it is Mr Moffatt’s work with Meta that is attracting scrutiny. However, this latest incident is not the first time the strategies of firms hired by the social media giant have been criticised.

In 2018, the New York Times exposed tactics used by a public relations company, Definers, hired by Facebook.

The paper said the firm circulated a document falsely claiming anti-Facebook campaign group Freedom From Facebook was backed by the financier George Soros.

Mr Zuckerberg said he had not been aware of the Definers actions and said the company would no longer work with the firm.