Russian Embassy Accounts Are Skirting Twitter’s Disinformation Policies

Despite Twitter banning prisoner of war pictures from state-owned accounts, it has yet to combat any of the other posts routinely spat out by government accounts. Despite the mum response by Twitter, some users have been fighting back against embassy propaganda, regularly posting video and other evidence in response to Russian claims.

Other platforms aren’t faring much better. Facebook’s parent company Meta has repeatedly changed its rules regarding disinformation coming out of Kremlin backed sources, but it still struggles to moderate content. Russia has already retaliated against both Google and Twitter for their efforts after the European Union banned Russian state media, which has long been adept at causing confusion, especially in foreign elections.

And none of that has been enough to stop official accounts from confusing the public. The Russian embassy in the USA has linked to Facebook video from state media org Russia Today in its posts and tweets about alleged “illegal” unexploded munitions they argue are either illegal or banned. This, of course, ignores the fact that Russia has been repeatedly shown to use munitions banned by international treaties.

While there have been legitimate reports of Ukraine hitting back with similarly banned weapons, the attempt to mislead the public about what’s happening in Ukraine has created a war of information that the US government still struggles to get a handle on.

It has been a struggle for the social media platforms to control disinformation, even before Russia invaded Ukraine. Russian accounts recently posed as fake journalists to level false information at Ukrainian Facebook accounts.