That is the appropriate conclusion to be drawn from reading the back-to-back calls issued by Associated Press and the Washington Post last week (AP on August 9, the Post on the 10th) for stepped-up measures to stop the spread of “Russian disinformation” about Ukraine and the so-called Russian-Ukrainian war. Although AP and the Post cited “studies” recently released by different outfits of the NATO-led U.S.-European “fact-checking” and “misinformation-tracking” slime mold, the demand was the same. As AP summed it up: “Western leaders and tech companies will have to do more than shutter one or two websites if they hope to stop the flow of Kremlin disinformation.”
The problem is that the “narrative” is losing ground. AP cites the report by the New York-based disinformation-tracker, NewsGuard, that six months after the EU blocked Sputnik and RT to cut off Russian propaganda, “the number of sites pushing that same content has exploded as Russia found ways to evade the ban.” NewsGuard is reported to have identified 250 websites “actively spreading Russian disinformation about the war” (no names given by AP), including some “pos[ing] as independent think tanks or news outlets.” Many may be Russian government “sleeper sites,” which had built up their credibility by posting “innocuous or unrelated” material “until they suddenly began parroting Kremlin talking points,” NewsGuard has decided.
The Post complains that “there has been little government action” to enforce the responsibility of tech companies to remove accounts or posts associated with blacklisted entities, and thereby Russia “found loopholes … social platforms offer Russia a chance to reach global audiences with unfiltered, sometimes vicious propaganda.” Cited among the examples of “vicious propaganda": “that the real villains in any case are Ukrainian `Nazis,’” or that “Ukrainian corruption meant that arms shipments from allies would fall into the wrong hands.” Not surprisingly, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation George Dubinskiy is a prominent source for the Post’s piece; he demands “clear rules” be reached on what is allowed in the “media sphere.” Anything that might undercut support for Ukraine among Western allies must be “Russian disinformation” and silenced.
The Post article reveals that there is discussion underway of going so far as to ban all Russian Embassy accounts from (Western) social media platforms. One Northeastern University professor, while all-in on banning war propaganda, did caution that “there are Russians living in countries all around the world, and they have a legitimate interest in being able to correspond with their embassies, and vice versa,” so banning Russian Embassies from the social media might be a little too much. (https://www.voanews.com/a/russian-disinformation-spreading-in-new-ways-despite-bans-/6694083.html ; https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/10/facebook-twitter-russian-embassy-accounts-propaganda/ )
