Twitter stated Monday that it will flag and limit the reach of tweets relating to Russian state-affiliated news sites, only hours after the European Union declared it will ban Russian state-funded channels RT and Sputnik for propagating disinformation and supporting Russian aggression in Ukraine.
According to Twitter, the new label will simply urge users to “keep informed,” and will display on tweets that share content from Russian state-affiliated media accounts—but not on tweets from those accounts because they are already tagged with “Russia state-affiliated media.”
Tweets containing Russian state media content will not be promoted by Twitter and will be removed from the “Top Search” function.
According to Twitter, the majority of Russian state media information on Twitter is transmitted through individual sharing rather than directly from the accounts of those media outlets, which means that the majority of people were viewing such content without obvious labelling.
According to Twitter, more than 45,000 tweets per day have been made giving links to Russian official media since Russia started an invasion of Ukraine on Thursday.
In the next weeks, Twitter plans to impose similar limits to state media content from additional nations.
