Putin owes Musk a medal
Georgi Gotev | @GeorgiGotev How effectively do social media platforms curb Russian disinformation? A recent European Commission report paints a worrying picture – and points the finger at Elon Musk. The Commission made public in August a 74-page report called “Digital Services Act: Application of the Risk Management Framework to Russian disinformation campaigns”. This research concluded that despite some measures taken, social media companies enabled the Kremlin to run a large-scale disinformation campaign targeting the EU and its allies during the first year of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine – and counting. And the mitigation measures failed, the Commission report hammered the warning home. In particular, it found that the reach and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts grew further in the first half of 2023, driven in particular by the dismantling of Twitter’s safety standards following its takeover by Musk. The EU had (wrongly) assumed that after the start of the full-blown war, online platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok would increase their content moderation capacities and deploy the necessary resources to apply mitigation measures against Russian propaganda. The report judged these efforts as “overall unsuccessful”. In particular, the Commission found no evidence that the platforms were prepared to deploy the necessary resources to apply mitigation measures effectively in Central and Eastern European languages (the cases in Bulgarian, Hungarian, Czech, and Slovak are researched in particular). For example, the report said moderation in Czech was “almost non-existent”. And all of this despite – in response to European Commission guidance – most major platforms signing an updated Code of Practice on Disinformation in June 2022. It should be mentioned, however, that Twitter withdrew from the Code in May this year. Engagement on pro-Kremlin accounts grew by 36% after that, the report said. As part of its sanctions against Moscow, the EU suspended the broadcasting activities of Russian state media outlets in the EU. But the Commission’s research showed that platforms had implemented their geoblocking policies with different levels of consistency. By 23 February 2023, Facebook had failed to geoblock 9% of the state media accounts impacted by the three rounds of EU sanctions, whereas Twitter and TikTok had failed to geoblock, respectively, 19% and 43% of the affected accounts. As of February 2023, Twitter—which used to publish transparency reports approximately every six months—had not released a report covering any period since December 2021. It is unclear whether this might be the consequence of recent company layoffs impacting key staffers responsible for transparency reporting. | 