At a glance.
- Unmoderated platforms are subject to the amplification of divisive misinformation.
- The tension between information operations and security operations.
- Preventive disinformation?
- Refusal of visas as the victim of war.
Unmoderated platforms are subject to the amplification of divisive misinformation.
An essay in Lawfare argues that, for all the attention paid to covert propaganda and coordinated inauthenticity, there has been a tendency to overlook the opportunity for overt disinformation and amplification that moderate social media platforms present. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, these get a lot of attention and concern, but there’s a lot of action elsewhere. “However, even as the Western conversation focuses on the successes and failures of Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet, state war propaganda is increasingly prevalent on platforms that offer minimal moderate virality as their value proposition.” The telegram stands as Exhibit A. The authors argue:
“Telegram Pavel Durov said in July 2021, conspiracy theories only get stronger every time their content is removed by moderators. Instead of ending wrong ideas, censorship often makes it harder to fight them.’ Contradiction, contextualization, and correction are, indeed, age-old alternatives to censorship. However, Telegram’s architecture is not providing an equal forum for gaining facts. Its undisguised forwarding function and the presence of highly prolific and unattributed channels create an environment in which state propaganda, overt and covert, can be disseminated with little oversight or accountability. The platform can maintain its decision to minimize the removal of groups and accounts and yet build features that create greater transparency around state-operated sites, or it can consider tracking restrictions that can mitigate the spread.”
So the medium may be the message, but social media is still waiting for its McLuhan. The focus on exposing the coordinated inauthenticity seen on larger platforms (especially Facebook) is laudable as an approach that provides some sort of control over disinformation without resorting to censorship or heavy-handed content moderation, but state propaganda operations are finding a way out. even. this simply by establishing an open presence on social platforms.
The tension between information operations and security operations.
Mr. Zelenskyy thinks some officials are talking too much. Ukrainian officials have generally been willing to give good words to journalists, but President Zelenskyy would like them to tone it down and think before they speak. Reuters reports that the president said, in a televised address on the evening of August 11, “War is definitely not the time for vanity and loud statements. The less details you divulge about our defense plans, the better it will be for implementation of those defense plans. If you want to generate loud headlines, that’s one thing – it’s frankly irresponsible. If you want victory for Ukraine, that’s another, and you should be aware of your responsibility for every word you say about our state’s plans for defense or counter-attacks”.
Preventive disinformation?
As shelling continued around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Russia may be preparing pre-emptive disinformation ahead of a provocation. Economist Correspondent posted on Twitter a video of a Russian public affairs officer warning, with dubious specificity, that “Ukraine is planning a ‘false flag provocation’ at the Zaporizhzhia (Enerhodar) power plant for August 19. ‘Russia will be blamed for the disaster caused by man,’ he warns.” The purported aim would be to shift the blame for a nuclear disaster (widely feared since Russian forces occupied the area around Zaporizhzhia) away from Russia and onto Ukraine.
Refusal of visas as the victim of war.
Not really, but that’s what Vladimir Rudolfovich is talking about.
A move to deny Russian citizens permission to travel to Europe appears to be gaining traction in the EU. It started in Estonia and has gained support in other Eastern European countries. The Telegraph quotes a tweet from Estonia’s foreign minister: “Visiting #Europe is a privilege, not a human right.” Officials in Latvia, Finland and the Czech Republic have asked the EU to stop the tourist visa policy across Europe.
Vladimir Rudolfovich Solovyev, a Rossiya 1 anchor who has gained considerable notoriety for his particularly muscular expressions of support for “Russia’s special military operation,” didn’t care much for that. He thought darkly in his Telegram feed: “The refusal to issue visas to Russian citizens and the declaration of the Russian Federation as an accomplice of terrorism ends relations with Europe. This means a real entry into the war with Russia. Severing ties, supplying weapons is direct participation in the war, moreover in a war with truly superior forces, considering the number and armament of NATO countries, this is a real threat to the existence of Russia and can lead to the use of the doctrine of a preventive nuclear attack”.
Military action, Mr. Solovyov soliloquies recently on Rossiya 1, maybe even nuclear attack, might be in order. He sees an analogy between that response and the 1983 US invasion of Grenada, the proximate cause of which was a perceived danger to US citizens studying at a medical school in the Caribbean country. If Russians can’t visit Paris, Berlin, London, etc., maybe those places should be removed. Mr. Solovyev’s reaction is interesting in showing his extreme sensitivity to the disrespect of foreigners that Russia can show. Worrying about being laughed at by foreigners can be hard for Americans especially to perceive and understand (America has been content to be the class clown of the Western world since rednecks sang Yankee Doodle during the Seven Years’ War) but it can we see signs of this desire being taken seriously throughout the Russian media. Thus an expressed desire to wipe Brussels off the face of the earth is more indicative of the wounded SELF-ASSESSMENT than a serious operational advisor.
Vladimir Rudolfovich’s complacency with nuclear annihilation fantasies aside, there may be other reasons to reconsider the widespread avoidance of Russians as such. The Telegraph broadcasts commentary from Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, who sees the blanket “cancellation” of Russians as a missed opportunity to change Russian public opinion. “These are tens and hundreds of thousands of people sitting on the fence who could come over to our side,” he said. “And now they won’t.” As far as can be determined in Russia’s notoriously closed society, Mr. Putin’s war remains widely popular, but there have been clear signs of low morale at the front and more obscure signs of unrest on the home front. The Guardian is publishing articles on the extraordinary anti-war manifesto “ZOV” that a Russian soldier posted on VKontakte. “I don’t see justice in this war,” former paratrooper Pavel Filatyev told the Guardian. It is extremely difficult to assess the effect of such expressions of dissent, how representative they are, how far-reaching they are, but the picture of Russian troops in action is disturbing and compelling.
