san francisco Facebook parent company Meta is blocking access to Russian state media RT and Sputnik on its platforms in the European Union. This was announced by the chief lobbyist and head of the group’s global affairs department, Nick Clegg, late Monday evening.
The company had been asked by several states and the European Union to restrict Russian state media, Clegg wrote on the short message service Twitter. “Given the exceptional situation, we will currently be restricting access to RT and Sputnik in the EU,” said Clegg. He did not name a period for blocking the provider.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had said: “The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik and their subsidiaries will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and sow the seeds of division in our Union.” said: “That’s why we are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe.”
Clegg had announced a few days earlier that the Russian authorities had asked his company to stop fact-checking and labeling state media content. His company refused.
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According to analyzes by the service NetBlocks, which specializes in Internet blockades, the US platforms Facebook and Twitter have largely been blocked in Russia since the weekend. According to NetBlocks, the services can hardly be used from Russia and cannot be reached via popular Internet providers such as Rostelecom, MTS, Beeline or MegaFon.
RT advertises: “We are the most watched news provider on Youtube”
US tech giants like Meta, Google’s parent company Alphabet, and Microsoft have taken action in recent days to stop Russian state media from monetizing advertising on their platforms.
RT is one of the stations with the widest reach on Youtube (screenshot).
Dealing with the Russian providers RT and Sputnik is particularly explosive for the Google video service YouTube. With 4.65 million subscribers, RT is one of the largest broadcasters on the platform. RT even advertises with the slogan: “We are the most watched news provider on YouTube.” According to its own account, RT achieved ten billion hits in 2020.
On Saturday, Google announced that it has imposed restrictions on RT and other Russian-backed channels, preventing them from earning revenue from advertising. “In response to a government request, we have restricted access to RT and a number of other channels in Ukraine,” a YouTube spokesman said.
“Digital war” is fought for interpretation sovereignty in social networks
Social networks are a central source of information about the development of the war in Ukraine. Messages on Facebook, videos on YouTube or short texts on Twitter reach an audience of millions worldwide within minutes. For years, providers have been struggling to develop effective systems so that their networks are not dominated by misinformation or hatred – with very mixed results.
Twitter announced that it would mark state-sponsored media websites from Russia with a special banner “in the coming weeks”. At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Twitter blocked the accounts of several analysts who had described troop movements. Twitter later described the step as a mistake and released the accounts again.
The Facebook parent company Meta announced on Sunday the blocking of around 40 accounts that were supposed to be used to spread false information. According to security researchers, however, the extent of targeted disinformation is much greater. The Israeli IT company Cyabra registered a huge increase in “anti-Ukraine posts” by 11,000 percent compared to the days before the start of the Ukraine war. “When you see an 11,000 percent increase, you know something’s happening,” Cyabra CEO Dan Brahmy told the AP.
Russian disinformation is said to have started even before the invasion of Ukraine
Even before Russian troops were deployed, the Kremlin was waging a “digital war” with targeted disinformation “to confuse its opponents and to provide a public justification for a possible military conflict,” said the New York-based NewsGuard service, which specializes in misinformation. “As the situation in Ukraine began to escalate, Russian propaganda increasingly focused on false narratives that provided pretexts or justifications for war.”
The European Union included the editor-in-chief of RT in a sanctions list on Wednesday. The EU called RT head Margarita Simonyan “a central figure in government propaganda”.
In the Federal Republic there has been a dispute over the German-language offer of RT for years. The Commission for Licensing and Supervision decided that the German-language RT may not go back on the air in Germany. The TV program may not be broadcast via satellite or via live stream on the Internet or mobile apps because “the media law approval required for this is not available,” the ZAK justifies the ban. The German division of RT started a live program in December, citing a Serbian broadcasting license, but was shut down by the satellite operator Eutelsat after a few days.
The Kremlin then issued a broadcast ban on the German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle in early February. In addition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ordered the channel’s office to be closed, canceled the accreditation of all journalists working there, and banned the broadcast of the program via satellite or other channels in Russia.
More: “Like David against Goliath”: Europe’s unequal fight against Russian disinformation.