Twitter begins “drastically” reducing the reach of Russian government accounts and will remove tweets from government-affiliated accounts with prisoners of war
This move caps a rapid escalation that began days into the invasion: first Twitter started labeling tweets linking to Russian state-backed media in early March 2022, now it is suppressing the government accounts themselves and deleting POW footage outright.
The suppression targets an audience largely outside Russia, since Russian internet providers had already restricted access to Twitter weeks earlier — making this a fight over what the rest of the world sees. A year later the policy would be unwound entirely, when tests showed limits on Kremlin-linked accounts including Putin's had been lifted.
First-order effects
Russian government accounts immediately lose distribution to most non-Russian users, and government-affiliated accounts can no longer publish tweets featuring prisoners of war — directly constraining both sides' information operations around the invasion.
Second-order effects
With Kremlin messaging throttled on Twitter while Russian providers block the platform domestically, both governments are pushed toward other channels — state media sites, Telegram-style networks — for reaching international audiences.
Third-order effects
State-account moderation proved reversible at the ownership level: by 2023 Twitter had removed the visibility-filtering rules behind these limits, meaning platform policy toward government accounts became a function of who ran the company rather than settled practice.
The trend: How platforms treat state and government accounts is shifting from durable policy to a lever that flips with each change of platform leadership.
Beginning today, we will require the removal of Tweets posted by government or state-affiliated media accounts which share media that depict prisoners of war in the context of the war in Ukraine. https://help.twitter.com/....
Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, our aim has been to remediate abuse at scale and be transparent about our work to protect the conversation happening on Twitter. Today, we're sharing two key updates about government affiliated accounts. https://blog.twitter.com…
We're doing so in line with international humanitarian law, and in consultation with international human rights groups. To protect essential reporting on the war, some exceptions apply under this guidance where there is a compelling public interest or newsworthy POW content.
This could create tension with Ukraine, which has shared hundreds of photos & videos of captured (or killed) Russian soldiers, saying it's a way to alert their families to brutality of war. Their Telegram channel of POWs/KIAs now has 1 million subscribers https://www.washingtonpo…
This is a decent step by @twitter, but it's still a half-measure. Russian propaganda outlet RT still has 3 MILLION followers on here. Why are they allowed to continue spreading disinformation on here? https://twitter.com/...