Twitter on Monday announced new measures to prevent the spread of disinformation linked to the Russian government in light of the country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The company will begin adding tags to tweets containing links from Russian state-affiliated media, noting their affiliation. The tags are accompanied by an orange exclamation point, warning Twitter users to “stay informed.”
Twitter will also begin reducing the visibility of Russian state-affiliated media on the platform, weakening the media’s ability to reach a broad audience.
Changes to tweets related to the Russian government will take effect immediately. Twitter says it plans to add similar tags for “other state-affiliated media accounts” in the coming weeks.
“As people search Twitter for reliable information about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we understand and take our role seriously,” Twitter’s Head of Page Integrity, Yoel Roth, said in a tweet. “Our product should make it easy to understand who is behind the content you see and what their motivations and goals are.”
Twitter began tagging state-controlled media accounts two years ago, but those tags appear on an account’s profile page and are not as visible as the tags within the tweets themselves.
The company does not allow ads from state-linked media accounts, a change it implemented in 2019 after a number of accounts linked to the Chinese government spread propaganda about protests in Hong Kong.
Roth added that the company has seen more than 45,000 tweets a day related to points related to the Russian government since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began just days ago. Roth characterized the new tags as a way to “add useful context” to Twitter conversations, in line with his efforts to do the same with tweets related to the global election and the pandemic.
