Tech companies' recent efforts to crack down on Russian propaganda on social media are unlikely to hamper Moscow’s campaign to undermine support for Ukraine, especially as major platforms, like X and Telegram, fail to take action.
Tech giant Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, banned Russian state-run media outlets like RT and Rossiya Segodnya from its sites on Sept. 17 over “foreign interference activity,” a Meta spokesperson told the Kyiv Independent.
The decision came days after the U.S. claimed that RT was collaborating with Russian intelligence to target countries globally amid a heavy-handed crackdown on the Kremlin’s disinformation campaigns.
Meta warned that Russia remains the number one source of information warfare, pointing to the Kremlin’s coordinated propaganda operation, codenamed “Doppelganger,” as its “most persistent” operation since 2017.
Doppelganger clones legitimate news and government websites to disseminate anti-Western, pro-Russian, and anti-Ukrainian narratives that are then shared on social media by bots.
Meta’s ban may not be enough to suppress Russia’s attempts to shape the narrative in key countries and grind down support for Ukraine among its allies. Moreover, X and Telegram — platforms where Russian propaganda runs wild — have done nothing to curb it. Even X’s owner, billionaire Elon Musk, has shared Kremlin propaganda on his X account.
Anti-Ukraine Kremlin propaganda on social media that seeks to undermine Kyiv’s international credibility has even caused delays in vital arms shipments, said Ruslan Deynychenko, a founder of Ukrainian fact-checker StopFake who works with Meta.
He points to an X post by far-right Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene that called funding for Ukraine “the most corrupt money scheme of any foreign war in (the U.S’) history,” and linked to a Kremlin propaganda source that claimed Kyiv’s politicians were suddenly earning millions of dollars.
U.S. auditors found no evidence of flagrant misuse of financial aid to Ukraine after setting up an anti-corruption working group at the start of 2023.
“(Russia’s) efforts are very effective. They make our efforts to defend our country less effective,” Deynychenko told the Kyiv Independent.
Content labeled Russian propaganda by Meta skyrocketed following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. The company took quick action by blocking ads from Russian state-media, and restricting visibility on users’ feeds, Meta told the Kyiv Independent.
As a result, Russian propaganda posts fell by 43% and engagement levels dropped by 80% by Aug. 24, 2022, compared to the same period in 2021, according to an external analysis by Graphika, a social media analysis company.
While praising Meta’s latest steps, Deynychenko believes it is mostly “symbolic,” noting that Russian propagandists will find workarounds.
To avoid Meta’s previous restrictions, propagandists set up Facebook pages that seemingly have no connection to the Kremlin, like a page dedicated to soap operas, and disseminated propaganda there, he said.
What's more, the ban is limited to Russian state-backed media and doesn’t cover ‘alternative’ news sites and commentators that espouse Russian propaganda, said Christian Mamo, founding member of Dutch-based non-profit group Osint for Ukraine. He points to The Grayzone, a U.S.-based media, which is still active on Facebook despite its founder Max Blumenthal frequently writing for and appearing on RT.
"Propagandists set up Facebook pages that seemingly have no connection to the Kremlin, like a page dedicated to soap operas, and disseminated propaganda there."
“Movements and individuals expressing pro-Russian views in the Western world don't get their narratives directly from RT, rather from localized institutions, ‘influencers,’ and political movements and online commentators,” Mamo told the Kyiv Independent, adding that Meta’s decision won’t achieve much with these restrictions.
A Tennessee-based “independent” media platform, Tenet Media, was discovered last month to have received financing from Russia and hosted several prominent alt-right journalists who frequently criticized Ukraine and NATO. The U.S. Justice Department charged two RT employees for violating foreign agent and money laundering laws over funding the network.
Kollen Post
If the ban doesn’t have any sincere impact, then Russia will continue eroding support for Ukraine and fomenting division in Europe, said Vadym Miskyi, program director of Detector Media, a Ukrainian think-tank. In the worst case scenario, it could lead to a drop in public and political will to support Kyiv long-term and cripple Ukraine’s defense, he added.
Russia doesn’t just target Westerners but also Ukrainians, largely through Telegram, the number one source for news in Ukraine. Rather than promoting a pro-Russian agenda, Telegram accounts often disguise themselves as pro-Ukrainian but propagate demoralizing messages to push Ukraine to give up.
They accuse the government of corruption or criticize the mobilization effort which is largely unpopular among civilians. Other narratives emphasize the mass losses of Ukrainians on the frontline or disunity among Ukrainian allies, said Mamo.
Kateryna Denisova
But it is on X that Russian propaganda has the most credibility. Since Musk’s takeover in 2022, Russian narratives have bled into X’s mainstream discourse and are even amplified on Musk’s personal account, noted Mamo.
X did not reply to the Kyiv Independent’s request for comment.
Russian propagandists use X to promote anti-Ukrainian or pro-Russian narratives to an international audience, where it reaches journalists and traditional media that cover Ukraine, said Deynychenko. The propaganda is more sophisticated than other platforms, he claims, and voices like Musk add a certain authority when they share disinformation or memes.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 1, 2023
In one instance, Musk shared a meme created by the Kremlin-backed organization the Social Design Agency (ASD), a joint investigation by over a dozen European newsrooms revealed. The meme, which mocks President Volodymyr Zelensky asking the U.S. for vital financial aid, has been viewed over 95 million times with 831,000 likes since it was posted in October 2023.
Memes satirizing Ukraine’s war efforts and political figures are particularly effective, says Deynychenko. Social media users are more likely to share memes they find funny over news stories, and humor is an effective shield against fact-checkers, he stressed.
“You cannot debunk humor and satire. You might look stupid when you debunk something that's circulating in the form of a meme or some other kind of joke,” Deynychenko said.
Introducing official
merch from the Kyiv Independent
