Paper by Sofya Glazunova, Anna Ryzhova, Axel Bruns, Silvia Ximena Montaña-Niño, Arista Beseler, and Ehsan Dehghan, presented at the International Communication Association conference, Toronto, 29 May 2023.

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A Platform Policy
Implementation Audit of Actions
against Russia’s
State-controlled Media
Presenter: Dr Sofya Glazunova (Queensland University of Technology // University of Melbourne)
Authors: Anna Ryzhova, Axel Bruns, Silvia Ximena Montana-Nino, Arista Beseler, Ehsan Dehghan

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Russia’s information influence
• A major threat for Ukraine, Europe, Western democracies (since 2014)
• RT and Sputnik are major mouthpieces of Kremlin foreign politics abroad,
sources of disinformation, and warfare instruments
• Their bans and restrictions were fragmented until the Russia’s full-scale invasion
of Ukraine in February 2022
• Then, the bans took mass and snowballing character across governments,
digital platforms, broadcast operators, etc.

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RT and Sputnik
• … for long time, were seen as instruments of Russia’s ‘soft power’ (Nye 2004), but
since 2008 (at least) are actively involved in Russia’s wars, and the spread of
disinformation abroad (e.g., Yablokov 2015, Cull et al. 2017, Rosenberg 2015, Lytvynenko & Silverman 2019)
• ‘Soft Power’ or ‘Sharp Power’? The ‘duality’ and influence on multilingual
Facebook audiences (Glazunova et al. 2022)
• Information on RT & Sputnik’s impact on audiences is fragmented (e.g., Kling et al. 2022,
Crilley et al. 2022, Glazunova et al. 2022, Nielsen 2022)

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Countries and transnational organisations

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Platforms
• Arbitrators of digital public spheres with their own policies and reinforced content
moderation of Russia’s state-controlled media
• March 2022: EU introduced a ban on RT and Sputnik within its member states,
including distribution “by internet service providers, internet video-sharing
platforms or applications” (Official Journal of the European Union 2022, 65/2)
• Canada, the UK, and Australia asked major tech giants to restrict their content

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Question
How major digital platforms have implemented
their content moderation policies towards RT and
Sputnik accounts after the first two months of the
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022?

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Aims
a) introduce a new research approach which we describe as a platform policy
implementation audit, designed to systematically observe and document the
various measures against identified problematic content that have been
implemented by selected platforms
b) demonstrate the utility of this approach by undertaking such a policy
implementation audit for six platforms in ten countries (including EU and non-
EU countries)

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Catalogue of measures
• Flagging of content, accounts
• Demonetisation
• Post takedowns
• Temporary suspension of accounts
• Platform-wide bans

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Method
A platform policy implementation audit

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Cataloging the measures towards RT and Sputnik
Creation of a database of all announced measures gathered from:
• Media reports
• Self-reporting by RT & Sputnik and their staff
• Official legislative documents
• Platforms’ blogs and policies

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The audit
• Aims to observe differences in banning and content moderation to RT and Sputnik
accounts on digital platforms.
• We draw on previous studies of online censorship (Aceto & Pescapé, 2015), hard
and soft platform moderation measures (York & Zuckerman, 2019), and
commercial content moderation (Roberts, 2018).
• We systematically access targets (13 outlets, 6 platforms, 10 countries), we trigger
the platforms’ restrictive actions (measures), and record the resulting symptoms
(content restriction)

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Parameters
• Timeline: 6.05-12.05.
• Manual coding by 6 coders
• 6 platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, Telegram, and
YouTube
• 10 countries: Germany, Poland, Spain, Lithuania, Hungary, US, Australia,
UK, Canada, Ukraine
• In GE, AU, ES coders were physically located, in the rest, access is
simulated through VPN
• 13 outlets (RT and Sputnik branches in 6 languages plus Ruptly)

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Content moderation measures
No measures On-sharing ban On-sharing flagging Click-through flagging
Flagging Demonetisation Post takedown Temporary suspension
Country block
Banning from the
platform
The page of RT/Sputnik on the platform does not
exist or could not be found.

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Limitations
• We do not account for measures implemented by individual Internet service
providers (ISPs) in these countries
• We tested only for those measures that platforms and governments said they
would implement and did not investigate ‘shadow bans’ and other less obvious
measures on digital platforms
• We performed our audit only for the desktop browser versions of these platforms

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Findings

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Evidence we gathered (two months after 24.02.22)
• Total ban in the EU (platforms should abide)
• Some platforms announced they conformed with the EU ban (did they?)
• In UK and Australia, senior officials asked platforms to ban RT and Sputnik (it didn’t happen…)
• Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter prohibit RT and Sputnik from advertising
• Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter (then Tik Tok) flagged RT and Sputnik as ‘state-affiliated
media’
• Occasional post take-downs (Twitter and Facebook)
• Temporary suspension of RT in Russian account on Twitter
• YouTube banned RT and Sputnik channels outright

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Findings: Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram)
Facebook
• RT and Sputnik pages not available in Hungary,
Poland, Germany and Spain in compliance with
EU regulations.
• BUT! In Lithuania and in Spain (using
VPN) → could access pages
• Facebook flagged RT and Sputnik posts, but not
the pages (headers).
• Facebook’s implementation of flagging has
focussed predominantly on the English-language
versions
Instagram
• Instagram RT and Sputnik pages not available
in all EU countries, but accessible in the rest.
• Systematically flagged accounts as “Russian
state-sponsored media”.
• Click-through flagging in stories prioritised
COVID over state-sponsored labels.
Inconsistent on-sharing flagging on both platforms →
overlook of non-English pages

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TikTok
• Despite the EU ban, accounts were
available
• But the videos were hidden, when accessed
from the EU states, UK, Canada → only in
desktop version, in mobile avalaible
• In Australia, US, and Ukraine, accounts
were flagged as “Russian state-sponsored
media”
Twitter
• Accounts flagged in non-EU countries
• In Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Hungary,
Twitter accounts were blocked
• Twitter’s differential treatment of RT Deutsch
• RT Deutsch’s tweets linked to a new domain
(circumvention technique by RT)
Findings: TikTok and Twitter accounts
Spain is most inconsistent case across 2 platforms

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Telegram
• All Telegram channels blocked in the EU
countries investigated
• In Spain, difference between using VPN or
not → could point to the role of Internet
Service Providers in implementing the
bans
• Countries outside EU – not restricting
channels
YouTube
• Most consistent and harsh response among
the platforms: total ban
Findings: Telegram and YouTube channels

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• The full-scale invasion was a driver for some platforms to continue and change their content
moderation policies (Meta, Twitter, YouTube), introduce new ones (TikTok), or practice minimum
intervention (Telegram)
• Our audit offers a systematic snapshot of the platform policy implementation
• Showed uneven implementation of the EU ban by the platforms after 2 months.
→ driven either by platforms, set sometimes as a symbolic action
→ or can be a limitation connected with different ISPs
→ active circumvention communication strategies by RT and Sputnik
• Policies have so far concerned only RT and Sputnik, but less so Russian domestic media or
government accounts (e.g., Russian Embassy on Twitter)
So what?

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• Twitter (Musk) marks BBC and NPR as
‘Government Funded Media’ along with RT
• RT accounts are reappearing on Twitter and
nobody takes them off
• Circumvention strategies by RT and Sputnik
• Re-orientation of RT on LATAM, Africa’s and
other non-Western audiences (Reuters
Institute 2023, Audinet 2023)
What now?

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Thank you
Read our article in Internet Policy Review soon