As war rages through The Ukraine at the hands of Vladimir Putin, Twitter and The Meta Group are working tirelessly to remove accounts purposefully spreading false information on the conflict. 

Technology giants have scrambled to help users understand right from wrong.

Following Russia’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine on Thursday, two social media giants, Twitter and Meta (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp among others) have responded to the spread of propaganda via their platforms. The propaganda, mostly being spread to praise the Russian cause, although not exclusively with this goal, has ranged from fake journalists personas being created, fake news sites, fake news articles and fake news accounts. Meta’s threat intelligence lead, Ben Nimmo, took to Twitter to update people on the work he and his team are doing, claiming that Meta uncovered a “relatively small” network of around 40 accounts – all of which have now been taken down, that “mainly posted links to long-form articles on its websites … it got very few reactions.”

Twitter have also permanently banned similar accounts on their platform, with concerns being raised over the ability for this type of propaganda to continue being spread on other platforms. Reporters at JLDN have also seen further posts whilst using social media over the week, many of which have made false claims surrounding the war. Whilst these posts are not always spreading the wrong information on purpose and don’t always have an agenda, they are equally as dangerous to the economy of news online.

A war of words: This image uncovered by one of our reporters, depicts a video that went viral this week in which a tank crushes a car in Ukraine, however contrary to what many posts had outlined, this was a Ukrainian tank that lost control, rather than a Russian attack.