As Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its 40th day, social media platforms are still working to update their policies to reflect the ongoing situation.
On Tuesday, Twitter announced that the platform would no longer “amplify or recommend government accounts belonging to states that limit access to free information and are engaged in armed interstate conflict.” The company says this will apply to all state-run accounts, regardless of whether that particular government has blocked Twitter in its country or not.
The first government accounts to be affected by this new policy change, unsurprisingly, are those run by Russia, according to Twitter. These Russian state-run accounts will no longer be promoted by Twitter’s algorithm in users’ home timelines, explore tabs, or in search.
Twitter’s new rules are pretty vague. Russia clearly checks the boxes outlined by the new policy. But what about Saudi Arabia? The United States? Based on Twitter’s own language in this policy, these countries can certainly check those boxes, too. However, as of right now, Russia is the only country that Twitter says the rule is currently affecting.
In addition to that new rule, Twitter has added a policy concerning media depicting prisoners of war. The platform will now request that government or state-run accounts “remove any media published that features prisoners of war.” If this media remains due to “compelling public interest,” Twitter will add a warning label to the tweet.
However, if PoW-related content is shared with “abusive intent,” which Twitter describes as insults or calls for violence, the company will outright remove the tweet, regardless of what type of account posts it.
This new rule is much more specific than the previous one. Twitter even cites international humanitarian law, “specifically Article 13 of Geneva Convention III,” which protects PoWs from “any physical or psychological abuse or threat thereof, and encompasses a prohibition on humiliating them,” when explaining the thought process behind this new policy.
It’s clear that Russia’s war in Ukraine has led companies like Twitter to rethink some of their content moderation policies as previous policies failed to stifle disinformation and propaganda. Twitter clearly has no qualms about enforcing these rules on Russia (and rightly so), but we’ll have to wait and see whether the company applies these policies equally to others.
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