EU study: social media companies have failed to stop pro-Russian disinformation and the “reach and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts” grew further in 2023
Social media companies have failed to stop “large-scale” Russian disinformation campaigns since the invasion of Ukraine, the EU has said.
Context & Ripple Effects
The finding follows a longer pattern in the coverage: researchers said in 2021 that Russian propaganda shifted into news-site comments as platforms tightened enforcement, an example of adaptation to platform crackdowns.
Early in the Ukraine invasion, platforms faced pressure over Russia-linked misinformation, while a later study described uneven performance across major services. The EU’s finding that Kremlin-backed accounts expanded their reach suggests those responses did not produce durable containment.
First-order effects
- The EU study puts fresh evidence behind scrutiny of social-media companies’ handling of pro-Russian influence operations, particularly their ability to limit the distribution and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts.
- Kremlin-backed networks retain an operational advantage on the affected services: the reported growth in reach during 2023 indicates that existing enforcement did not stop large-scale campaigns.
Second-order effects
- Platforms will face stronger incentives to reassess detection, distribution controls, and enforcement consistency, since earlier coverage already documented uneven platform responses to flagged Russian propaganda.
- Influence operators are likely to keep testing less visible channels and formats when account-level or post-level restrictions are applied, consistent with the earlier shift toward propaganda in news-comment sections.
Third-order effects
- If repeated assessments continue to show expanding reach despite public enforcement measures, the central measure of platform safety will shift from removals announced to whether coordinated networks can sustain distribution and influence.
- The pattern points to a persistent adversarial cycle: moderation changes can redirect campaigns rather than end them, making cross-platform resilience—not isolated takedowns—the harder long-term challenge.
The trend: This is one data point in the continuing shift from content moderation as reactive removal toward measuring whether platforms can withstand adaptive state-linked influence campaigns.