Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has said it is expanding its fact-checking service in Ukrainian and Russian, prohibiting ads from Russian state media, and restricting access to some Russian state media services in Ukraine. Russia, in turn, has throttled access to Western social media services, making it harder for its citizens to get independent news on the war that challenges the narrative of state broadcasters.
Content moderation systems designed to stop hateful content or misinformation can backfire too. Australian photojournalist Bryce Wilson, who has been covering Ukraine since 2015, was blocked from live-streaming on Instagram last week. He had previously been covering the Azov group, a Ukrainian militia that has been criticised for its white nationalist ideology, and then rapidly became known for a video of a missile streaming overhead.
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Wilson said the group was nationalist but that it had reformed since 2014, leaving some criticisms outdated. “I did not and would not publish any extremist content because I don’t support that stuff, and never will,” Wilson told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age from Ukraine at about 4am, local time.
Being unable to live-stream was making it harder to document the conflict, Wilson said.
“It’s a shit system with no oversight,” he said of Meta’s content moderation. “It’s especially concerning because there were zero issues with me doing it until that missile video went ‘viral’ and I started getting tens of thousands of followers.
“I didn’t want all of the attention. Was just doing my work.
“But now that they have limited my account ability to live stream it has really impacted my ability to share news with people about the conflict and humanitarian crisis.”
A spokeswoman for Meta said the company had made a narrow exception for praise of Azov Regiment in the context of defending Ukraine but continued to ban all hate speech. “We’re investigating this account,” the spokeswoman said, when asked about Wilson’s streaming suspension.
Tips for being a savvy conflict media consumer
Professional fact checking groups use open-source intelligence techniques, such as looking for corroborating images through satellite photos and scouring the metadata of images, to determine what’s real and fake. But few people have the time to do that when thumbing through their TikTok feed. Professor Daniel Angus says there are more basic steps that are still helpful.
- Look for content from reputable sources: Does an image or video come from a mainstream media account, or an affiliated journalist? Do photographs come with a watermark, caption and link to a media outlet? Is the outlet independent of a state involved in the conflict?
- Examine the history of accounts: Has the account been consistent in its posting? Was it previously dedicated to something else? If it claims to be a Ukrainian resident, do previous posts tally with that? Do you know the poster personally?
- Be content with not posting. ”Think about not retweeting or liking content that you can’t hand on heart say is absolutely honest or truthful,” Professor Angus says
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