Big tech must reject Kremlin’s propaganda

Russia’s disinformation machine got off to an uncharacteristically slow and uncertain start when the country’s tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border.

Perhaps it was the widespread accounts of heroism, courage and sheer defiance among the people that it had come to liberate from imaginary “neo-nazis” and “junkies” that caught Russian trolls off guard.

Videos of Ukrainian farmers towing Russian tanks went viral; ordinary Ukrainians uploaded clips of angry crowds remonstrating with their occupiers in towns across the country; and the Daily Mail reported on a Ukrainian grandmother who has been making molotov cocktails from a recipe she found online.

The strength of the resistance and bravery of the people of Ukraine has captured the world’s imagination and admiration, while heaping further shame and humiliation upon Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin’s propaganda apparatus has since gone into overdrive, raising fresh questions about the role of social media in facilitating Russian attempts to cloud the facts and spread dangerous untruths.

It is therefore encouraging to learn that Facebook and Twitter are beginning to grasp the nettle. In recent days, the goons inside Russia’s intelligence agencies have gifted us some classics of the disinformation genre.

At the heart of this factory of deception is Russia’s creepy Bond villain foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who on Thursday was still peddling the Orwellian lie that Russia “did not attack Ukraine” but rather is engaged in “a special military operation” because its neighbour represents “a direct threat” to his country.

But it was Russia’s bogus claims about the bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol that jolted

Facebook and Twitter into action. Both have removed posts from the Russian embassy in London falsely claiming that images of the attack had been faked. Lavrov also attempted to peddle a line that the facility had become a base for radical Ukrainian fighters and that civilians were being used as human shields. The “human shield” accusation is particularly crude but like a lot of disinformation also difficult to disprove, which is why it is an old favourite of rogue regimes looking to cover up their war crimes.

There has been a long debate about the extent to which Russia influenced the last US presidential election. That Russia’s troll farms made a serious and concerted effort to boost the Trump campaign by sowing social discord among Americans is now accepted as fact. US intelligence officials say the information warfare operation was codenamed Project Lakhta and ordered directly by Putin.

But whether any of it had any real impact is arguable. Based on the Kremlin’s efforts to win the information war in Ukraine, it is hard to believe that Moscow is blessed with a sinister capability to subvert Western governments. Russia is well versed in the conspiracy of war but much of it is deeply unsophisticated.

None the less, to allow its fiction to spread or indeed be published is dangerous enough. If just one person believes Russia’s alternative version of the Mariupol hospital bombing then that is a victory for Putin’s war, and there are growing concerns about the extent to which the Russian people are backing it under false pretences.

It is certainly true that Facebook and Twitter have allowed both official and unofficial sources to pump out reams of disinformation for too long completely uncritically. In the weird utopian world of Silicon Valley, allowing disinformation, incitement of hatred, and celebrations of violence to go unchecked is what passes for supporting free speech, as opposed to undermining democracy.

In their obsessive desperation to stay out of politics, US technology companies have sought to remain firmly on the fence. But to do so in this instance is as good as taking sides and enabling the Russian regime’s lies, as well as undermining the West’s attempts to stop the war.

Perhaps the decision to take down the posts about Mariupol indicates a realisation that a refusal to get involved in politics simply doesn’t wash because to not take a view is to tolerate being used as a platform for propaganda.

Even more crucially perhaps, Meta, the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, will allow users in some countries close to Ukraine to to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion.

It may also be a recognition that it has a responsibility to the democracies that facilitate its highly profitable operations, which ultimately means standing up for Western values.

If so, it is a welcome shift. Even Silicon Valley must pick a side.

‘To remain on the fence in the instance of Russian lies is as good as taking sides’