Ukraine War Resource Hub

CJR

Columbia Journalism Review keeps a timeline of all the activities affecting newsrooms and platforms during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Global Disinformation Index

Every week, GDI tracks how ad tech continues to provide funding pipelines to disinformation in the Ukraine war.

Online platforms

Social media platforms are regularly updating their policies to reduce the spread of misinformation.

• Discord has announced that it will remove “false or misleading information.”
• Douyin, Weibo, WeChat and Bilibili, four popular Chinese social media platforms, announced they had begun to delete content, accounts, and comments spreading alleged misinformation, calling for war, or making vulgar remarks.
• DuckDuckGo has “started down-ranking sites based on whether they’re deemed to be associated with Russian disinformation.”
• Google, the parent company of YouTube, policies on disinformation include blocking RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik in Europe and stops all advertising in Russia across their platforms.
•  Meta is “restricting access to RT and Sputnik across the EU” and demotes content from “Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts from Russian state-controlled media outlets and making them harder to find across our platforms”. On March 10,  Facebook and Instagram users in some countries are allowed to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, in a temporary change to Meta’s hate speech policy.
• Reddit “banned links to state-supported Russian media outlets across the site, and for all users worldwide. It has also banned all ads from Russia or targeting Russian users.” The platform also quarantined the subreddits r/Russia and r/Russianpolitics from the platform’s search results.
• Under pressure from the EU, Telegram has banned Russia state media.
• TikTok announced it blocked all non-Russian content, in addition to ban on livestreaming and adding new content from Russia.
• Twitch will ban users who persistently spread harmful misinformation.
• Twitter has taken multiple steps to prevent attempts at amplifying false and misleading information. Recently, they added “extra labels to Tweets that share links to Russian state-affiliated media websites.” As of March 11, Twitter also labels “accounts and Tweets sharing links of state-affiliated media outlets in Belarus.” Twitter announced this week it would stop amplifying state-run accounts and would limit accounts that post videos or images of war prisoners.

Worldwide companies’ responses. 

Some worldwide companies have severed ties with Russia and suspended services in the country. Amongst them, Airbnb; Amazon stopped shipments, Prime Video streaming and New World MMO purchases;  Apple paused all product sales after stopping all exports in the country, and Apple Pay services are limited; Cogent Communications cut off services to Russian clients;  Microsoft has halted all new sales of products and services in Russia and is halting “many aspects” of its business in the country; Netflix; Paypal; Spotify shuttered its Russia office indefinitely, and took down content  all content from Russian state news agencies Sputnik and RT; Visa, Mastercard and American Express.  The Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute monitors the companies which have withdrawn from Russia, and which ones haven’t. 

Sanctions against Russia

Correctiv provides a live monitoring of all sanctions and embargoes against Russia. 

Sanctions against Russia Today & Sputnik

The Council of the EU suspended the broadcasting activities of Sputnik’ and Russia Today in the EU. More here.

Media Manipulation Casebook

The Shorenstein Center’s Media Manipulation Casebook has been updated with useful records of social media takedowns and content moderation during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.