Censorship and Propaganda Dominate the Ukraine Conflict
The Battle in Ukraine Becomes Near Impossible to Analyze as Fog of War Grows Thick
As a response to the Russian advance in Ukraine, the nations of NATO have agreed to ban several Russian banks from the SWIFT financial system. Essentially kicking the Russian market off of the main platform, which will make it more difficult for them to participate in global trade.
Considered to be the “nuclear option of sanctions”, it was threatened in the past by Russia that doing so would be regarded as a declaration of war.
Along with the threat of conflict, countries like Germany were hesitant to agree to the plan because over the years they’ve become extremely reliant on Russian gas and oil. They know that by taking the steps to remove Russia from SWIFT they’ll lose access to their main supplier of energy.
Also what we’re seeing as a direct result of these actions, is the EU putting pressure on social media to block access to Russia.
"The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin's war and to saw division in our Union," said the EU's president, Ursula von der Leyen. "So we are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe."
On Sunday, the EU industry chief Thierry Breton had a video call with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pachai and Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki. Who a day prior took the move to demonetize Russian funded media like RussiaToday(RT) and Sputnik across their platforms. Breton is asking for them to go further.
"Freedom of expression does not cover war propaganda. For too long, content from Russia Today and other Russian state media has been amplified by algorithms and proposed as 'recommended content' to people who had never requested it,"
Twitter said it will be continuing to monitor its platform for "emerging narratives" which violate platform rules as the situation in Ukraine develops. Such as rules on synthetic and manipulated media and its platform manipulation policy -- adding that it will take enforcement action when it identifies content and accounts that violate its policies.
Twitch and OnlyFans have also jumped into the fray, banning all Russian users from their platforms, preventing them from withdrawing any money since Russia has been kicked from SWIFT.
In response the Russians have take the steps to ban both Twitter and Facebook from their country over current disputes around coverage in Ukraine.
The argument from the establishment to the social media firms is essentially that now since they’ve been banned, they should take the counter measures to restrict Russian access. Though in reality it has to be considered that many people across Russia have access to VPN’s which would allow them access to Western media.
So while the authoritarian government of Russia is trying to stifle information to keep a narrative, we need to be able to retain access to whoever we can over there. This fear around Russian propaganda “toxifying” our minds is just propaganda itself.
It has to be realized that our own governments are going to be deploying their own levels of psyops as well. And with social media working hand in hand with the western world, the level of fake news can never be truly determined. That’s why the only real way to get a sense of direction is having access to both ends of the spectrum.
The internet is a powerful tool of communication and it should be demanded that we get unfettered access to these sources of information. Whether or not we can differentiate the propaganda is up to the individual, if there’s a problem with how successfully people can do that I only need point at our sad excuse of an education system. Which dedicates over a decade of our lives to regurgitating information without critical analysis.