Meta, Twitter Detail Safety Measures Regarding Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Meta and Twitter took several steps over the weekend to address safety and security on their respective platforms related to Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Most recently, Meta VP global affairs Nick Clegg tweeted Monday that the platform has restricted access to RT and Sputnik across the EU, after requests from a number of governments and the European Union. On the advertising front, Meta head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher said in a tweet late last Friday that all Russian state media entities are prohibited from running ads or monetizing on its platforms anywhere in the world. Meta said in a Newsroom post that it continues to provide greater transparency on accounts from state-controlled media outlets such as RT and Sputnik “because they combine the influence of a media organization with the strategic backing of a state, and we believe people should know if the news they read is coming from a publication that may be under the influence of a government.” And Twitter said in a Twitter Safety tweet Friday that it is temporarily pausing ads in Russia and Ukraine in order to ensure that critical public safety information is elevated and promotional content does not detract from it. Meta said it established a special operations center staffed by experts from across the company, including native Russian and Ukrainian speakers, to monitor and remove content that violates its community standards or community guidelines, and it also has teams of native Russian and Ukrainian content reviewers in place. The company is getting feedback from local and international partners on emerging risks and moving quickly to address those risks. Meta said late Sunday that at the request of the government of Ukraine, it restricted access to several accounts in that country, including those belonging to some Russian state media organizations. Also Sunday, Meta removed a network based in Russia and Ukraine and targeting the latter by running websites posing as independent news entities ad creating fake personas across social platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Odnoklassniki, Telegram, Twitter, VK and YouTube. The company noted increased targeting of Ukrainian military and public figures by Ghostwriter, a threat actor that has been tracked for some time by the security community, urging people in Russia and Ukraine to adopt stronger account security measures such as two-factor authentication. On the misinformation front, in addition to working with its network of third-party fact-checkers, Meta is warning users in the region when they try to share war-related images that its systems detect are more than one year old so that people have more information about outdated or misleading images that could be taken out of context. The company is using keyword detection to group content related to the war in one place and make it easier for fact-checkers to locate, as well as adding warning labels to content rated false by fact-checkers and labels to state-controlled media publishers. For individual users, Meta added a tool that enables them to lock their Facebook profile in one step, meaning that people who aren’t their friends cannot download, enlarge or share their profile photo, nor can they see posts or other photos on someone’s profile, regardless of when they may have posted. The company also temporarily removed the ability to view and search the friends lists of Facebook accounts in Ukraine to help protect people from being targeted, and all Instagrammers in Ukraine will see a top-of-feed notification about privacy and account security. Notifications about screenshots of disappearing messages in end-to-end encrypted chats on Messenger were quickly rolled out in the region. Twitter kicked off a giving campaign for its employees, with donations going toward verified organizations directly supporting Ukrainian refugees seeking shelter and safety, and the company will match all of those donations, as well as making a direct contribution to a partner organization. Twitter Safety said in its tweet, “We’ll continue to take steps to safeguard people on the service and the communities they operate within, while enforcing the safety and integrity of the platform during this time.” This piece was updated to include Nick Clegg's tweet restricting access to RT and Sputnik.

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Meta, Twitter Detail Safety Measures Regarding Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Russian state media entities cannot advertise or monetize content on Meta’s platforms, while Twitter temporarily paused all ads in the 2 countries

David Cohen

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