Dmitry Medvedev, a leading official in the Russian government who was the former president of Russia, used Twitter earlier in the month to criticize Ukraine in a tweet using words that evoked genocidal regimes.
Twitter was not able to stop him.
In his tweet of 645 words that reads, “WHY WILL UKRAINE DISAPPEAR? Because nobody needs it,” Medvedev called Ukraine a “Nazi regime,”” “blood-sucking creatures” and “a threadless quilt that is broken, shaky and oily.”
The post received over 7,000 Retweets as well as 11,000 likes.
One of the responses one question was asked Twitter the CEO Elon Musk, why he permitted Russian officials to publish tweets that contained this kind of content, particularly when they used words that are frequently associated with genocide.
“All information is to a certain degree propagandism,” Musk responded. “Let people make their own choices.”
Musk’s position of permitting Russian post from the government to appear freely on feeds of people has become a company policy. This is a significant change from the “shadow restrictions” -which is also known as in Twitter terminology “visibility filters” which were previously imposed on these accounts.
NPR has confirmed that this was a deliberate move from inside the company.
The guardrails that were previously in place for the accounts of government officials that were in place for Russia, China and Iran are now gone, in the words of two former Twitter workers who spoke with NPR on basis of anonymity in fear of retribution.
“What I’ve heard has occurred is that, under Elon Musk’s direction and the direction of the Twitter Trust and Safety Team, or whatever it was left used a chainsaw to the transparency filtering rules” stated someone who was a former employee who was a senior executive at the company.
The executive who was the former boss claimed they were able to learn about the incident from conversations with the current employees, former employees, and others who were watching the incident.
Twitter uses “visibility filters” for certain accounts in order to ensure that less people see these accounts tweets.
In the past its Trust and Safety Team has employed them for Russian government accounts as well as state-affiliated media accounts of countries “that restrict access to information that is free.” His account, which was owned by Medvedev, was part of the group according to one former worker.
With no visibility filtering These accounts are now able to be easily boosted and reach a wider world-wide public. This could lead to an increase in pro-government propaganda through Twitter and could result in real-world consequences for those who do not agree with authorities.
Removing the restrictions from state-affiliated media accounts can cause more general false information on Twitter according to Sarah Cook, a senior adviser at the non-profit Freedom House who researches China, Hong Kong and Taiwan and wrote the study China’s Global Megaphone.
“It’s not only concerned with making people from the Chinese Communist Party look good. It’s not only about making Hong Kongers and activists appear poor,” Cook said. “In certain cases it’s also about spreading misinformation about COVID, or sowing tensions in Taiwan or in the United States.”
Spike in engagement
Since Twitter removed its transparency filters for state-affiliated media The researchers have observed an increase in followers on these accounts.
The Atlantic Council, a U.S. think organization that is focused in international issues, analyzed various accounts on behalf of NPR. In its findings, it found more followers and a higher level of engagement on various government media outlets that are associated to the Russian network RT (Russia Today) and the Chinese’s CGTN (China Global Television Network) and Iran’s PressTV. These accounts experienced a significant rise in followers around the 29th of March.
Prior to that the accounts were “hemorrhaging fans,” the Atlantic Council stated.
While not every account saw an increase however, the fact that a number of significant ones from three different governments experienced significant gains “strongly indicates a system-wide algorithmic shift.”
The 6th of April, just a few days after the increase started, the group spotted Twitter’s “Platform Usage Guidelines” were rewritten to eliminate a clause that stated “Twitter will not endorse or increase the reach of” media accounts associated with the state.
“This entire episode demonstrates what happens when we give our public discourse to technology companies” stated Alyssa Kann who works at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and examined the government’s accounts.
“When we’re in the public square, which is basically a private billionaire’s paradise I’m sure these kinds of things can occur,” she said.
When NPR sent an email to Twitter to ask for a comment on this report, the company responded with the usual reply to journalists: a poop emoji. Ella Irwin, Twitter’s vice director of product management for security and trust, did not respond to an inquiry for clarification.
Along with reversing the filtering of visibility of government account accounts Twitter additionally ended its old practice of giving researchers and developers the ability to access its data using an application known as API. It’s now much more difficult for security agencies to monitor the spread of propaganda by government on the site.
The Atlantic Council said it’s now using third-party software, but they’re not as complete or reliable.
In light of the numerous changes that have occurred at Twitter it was reported that a lot of the research on the state media and other actors of the government that was previously common simply isn’t feasible anymore.
“Until Twitter 2.0 it was sort of settled” stated Graham Brookie, the Atlantic Council’s vice-president for technology programs. “And there was a consensus in lots of places all over the globe where it actually is important.”
How did it get started… what’s going
When Twitter first announced its visibility filtering system to media owned by states in 2020. The Trust and Safety Team consulted with a variety of researchers and human rights organizations. The way in which the filters worked meant that those accounts labeled as state media were not recommended or increased.
For instance, if a user was not following RT and entered it in the search box, it wouldn’t be displayed.
Following a controlled trial, Twitter found the reach of Russian state media’s tweets fell by 30% due to the filtering. The company started filtering Russian state accounts at the beginning of the Ukraine war, it noticed engagement per tweet drop by 25%..
In the same way to that, an 2021 report from the China Media Project found at the very least 20% less engagement with Chinese state-owned media.
While officials from Russia, China and Iran have Twitter accounts However, access to the website is not permitted in these three countries. This means that ordinary people can’t express their views and experiences. This can cause a disparate flow of information that can see the government is able to drown out ordinary citizens.
The filtering of visibility was intended to address some of those issues.
It’s not known the date Twitter removed the filtering of visibility, but as with other members of the Atlantic Council, Voice of America reporter Wenhao Ma first noticed it around the close of March. He tried some things and discovered Twitter was automatically sending him recommendations for Chinese state-owned media accounts that he didn’t follow.
Just a few days after, Twitter slapped the state-affiliated media label onto NPR.
Twitter’s policy prior to the state-affiliated media stated that news institutions that receive government funding however have independent editorial autonomy “like NPR in the US or BBC” BBC and NPR in UK or NPR in the UK and NPR across the US” could not be classified as. (NPR receives less than 1 percent of its funding by the state).
The result was a hectic few days.
A conversation via email, Musk told NPR reporter Bobby Allyn that it was possible that the label wasn’t correct. Twitter changed its designation as “government-funded media” and then used it for PBS as well as the BBC. In the end, NPR was forced to leave Twitter.
In the same time frame, Twitter adjusted its policy on what it considers “government-funded media” and also linked to an Wikipedia webpage about public broadcasting as its primary source.
The night of Thursday, that policy page vanished from Twitter’s site. Also, the labels of NPR, PBS and the BBC’s account.
Labels for Russian, Chinese and Iranian state-owned media also disappeared and so did the “Russia official in the government” label on Dmitry Medvedev’s Twitter account.
“We met with scientists and specialists,” said the former Twitter executive. “And these decisions are taken because Elon Musk reads an image of Catturd in a tweet and decides that’s the way Twitter will look similar to.”
“It’s frustrating to witness labels designed to educate people are used to trick people,” the former executive added.
Disclosure The story was written as well as composed by NPR Tech Correspondent Dara Kerr, and editing by the Business Editor Lisa Lambert. The NPR’s Shannon Bond contributed to this report. As per NPR’s guidelines for self-reporting, no employee of the company or director reviewed the story prior to it being released to the public.
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