More recently, Russian and Chinese officials haveclaimedthe United States has funded bioweapons research in Ukraine.
Social media has played a crucial role in the spread of these and other false claims.
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Democracy relies on citizens ability to make informed decisions about policy, politics, and world affairs.
This ability is severely compromised when fake and (deliberately) misleading claims are promoted as fact.
As we have seen during theCOVID-19 pandemic, disinformation can also posea grave threatto public health and safety.
They are built to be open to all comers and increase the volume on any key in of content.
At the time of writing these accounts together have a total of 7,366,622 followers.
They have been retweeted 35.9 million times, received 29.8 million likes, and 4 million replies.
The accounts have tried to spread false narratives to justify the invasion.
Daily tweet volume in 2022 of Russian government accounts (coloured by tweets about Ukraine versus other).
Russian government accounts have tweeted and retweeted disinformation about Ukraine.
However, these rules do not apply to government-controlled accounts not labeled as media, such as foreign embassies.
As a result, these accounts are flooding the platform with propaganda.
This is a critical gap in Twitters moderation practices and one that has received little attention.
Weanalyzed their tweetsand found they often retweet the same content at about the same time.
Coordinated retweeting of disinformation by official Russian government Twitter accounts.
The picture above shows a web link visualization of coordinated retweet behavior among the 75 Russian government accounts.
What can be done?
Twitter needs to do more to safeguard the platform from harmful content by state actors.
Government accounts are still free to flood the space with false information.
Twitters policies and rules need to be modified to suit special circumstances such as war.
Platforms have traditionally taken their cues from the techno-libertarian adage that information wants to be free.
This has turned out to be a disaster for liberal democracy and public health.
Users can and should ask themselves: How accurate is this claim?
How can the claim be verified?
Who is posting this information about Russia?
What stake does that person or persons have in Russian state affairs?
How might amplifying this content, even to criticize it,unwittingly spread it further?
