U.S. Senator Mark Warner Urges Tech Companies To Fight Russian Propaganda In Ukraine—Russian Officials Punish Those That Do

A top U.S. senator is calling on the nation’s largest tech companies to do more to combat misinformation amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

On Friday, U.S. Senator Mark Warner, D-Virginia, sent letters to Alphabet, Meta, Reddit, Telegram, TikTok, and Twitter asking the companies to take further action to prevent Russian propaganda operations on their platforms. Warner—who is chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—also pointed out that YouTube continues to allow Russian websites known for spreading propaganda to make money from ads.

“Just yesterday, for instance, my staff was able to find RT, Sputnik and TASS channels’ content specifically focused on the Ukraine conflict to be monetized with YouTube ads – including, somewhat perversely, an ad by a major U.S. government contractor,” Warner wrote in a letter to Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube. “Meanwhile, Google’s wider ad network continues to support influence outlets such as Sputnik and TASS, directing advertising dollars from unwitting U.S. brands like Best Buy, Allbirds, and Progressive to entities whose ties to Russian influence activity has been well-documented for over five years.”

Tech companies, Warner said, should create ways for Ukrainian public safety organizations to send emergency information to users, and provide the Ukrainian government and humanitarian groups with additional account monitoring and security tools. He also said companies should hire people who are proficient in Russian and Ukrainian to monitor content and identify inauthentic accounts. 

A vocal critic of Silicon Valley’s tech giants, Warner has spent years sponsoring bills in Congress to prevent Russia from spreading misinformation in the U.S. and around the world through platforms like Google and Facebook. In 2017, he introduced bi-partisan legislation The Honest Ads Act, and in 2019 released a new bi-partisan report about Russia’s use of social media. However, so far none of the efforts has gained much traction.

“Information warfare constitutes an integral part of Russian military doctrine,” Warner said today in a statement. “As this conflict continues, we can expect to see an escalation in Russia’s use of both overt and covert means to sow confusion about the conflict and promote disinformation narratives that weaken the global response to these illegal acts.”

Tech companies that have stepped up their content moderation have faced backlash from the Kremlin. Meta, for example, established a “Special Operations Center” with native Russian and Ukrainian speakers to monitor content in real-time. When it refused to comply with Russian officials’ orders to stop fact-checking and labeling misinformation posted to Facebook by four state-owned media organizations, the government responded by limiting Russian users’ access to the social network.

“The situation in Ukraine is devastating,” Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs at Meta, said in a statement. “Our teams at Meta have implemented a number of measures to keep our platforms and our users in the region as safe as we can. This is a fast moving situation and our teams remain on high alert.”

In the United Kingdom, the British government has asked independent communications regulator Ofcom to review Kremlin-backed broadcaster RT to determine whether it should be banned for spreading misinformation.

In a statement about the request, Ofcom CEO Melanie Dawes wrote that “free media is one of the cornerstones of our democracy,” but that the “Ofcom takes very seriously our role as the independent communications regulator, charged with upholding freedom of speech while ensuring that TV and radio audiences are protected from harm.”

“Recognizing the serious nature of the crisis in Ukraine, we have been keeping the situation under close review and have already stepped up our oversight of coverage of these events by broadcasters in the U.K.,” Dawes wrote. “We are expediting complaints in this area as a matter of urgency and we will not hesitate to take swift action where necessary. I am confident that we have the full range of enforcement tools at our disposal and our track record shows that when we find a breach of our rules, we can and do take action.”

Government officials aren’t the only ones worried about how internet giants are moderating content and advertising that spreads Russian misinformation. Advertising industry execs are concerned that tech companies operating digital ad networks might inadvertently allow ads from major U.S. brands to appear on misinformation websites—including some already banned in the U.S. 

Joshua Lowcock, global digital and brand safety officer at the IPG-owned agency Universal McCann, said ad-tech companies need to “stop funding with ad dollars and amplifying (via paid ads) Russian state-owned media which are currently waging a propaganda war.”

“Unless sanctions explicitly call out Russian state owned media and propaganda, as was the case with the U.S. Treasury last year, the platforms and ad-tech ecosystem will not take action because they have frequently proven it’s profit over people and democracy until it’s too late,” he said.