Twitter announced Monday that it will start labeling and making it harder for users to see tweets about the invasion of Ukraine that contain information from Russian state media outlets like RT and Sputnik.
“For years we’ve provided more context about state-affiliated media while not accepting ad $ or amplifying accounts,” Twitter said in a tweet. “With many looking for credible info due to the conflict in Ukraine, we’re now adding labels on Tweets linking to state media & reducing the content’s visibility.”
Twitter said it had seen over 45,000 tweets a day from people sharing links to Russian state media, much more than coming from state-sponsored accounts.
Twitter began to de-amplify Russian state media accounts in 2020 and had earlier banned Russian state media from advertising.
The announcement Monday will impact individuals sharing links from those entities.
The move is the latest spat between U.S. social media companies and Russia.
Twitter has been slowed down in Russia several times, most recently on Saturday, and last week, Russia said it would limit Russians’ access to some features of Facebook, saying the company was involved in censorship.
Google and Facebook have also banned Russian state media from monetizing their accounts.
Some information in this report comes from Reuters.
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