As Russia launched its unprovoked attack on Ukraine last week, it also started a battle

with American social media companies.

Here's Rico Charingafari.

As this war started, these tech companies like Facebook and Twitter are moderating content

that's on their platforms, and sometimes that goes against the interests of the Russian

government.

So on Friday, February 25th, Russia announced that it's going to restrict access to the

estimated 70 million people who use Facebook in Russia.

And it claimed that Facebook was restricting pro-Russian new sites, and that was a form

of censorship, and that's why it would, in retaliation, essentially, censor Facebook.

But later that day, Metta pushed back and said that Russian authorities had ordered

the company to stop independent fact-checking and labeling of content, and that it would

not be pushed by the Russian government to essentially stop fact-checking.

On Saturday morning, Twitter also confirmed that its app is similarly being restricted

for some people in Russia, and this is a big deal, because again, there are tens of

millions of people in the country who are using these tools, and for them, Facebook and

Twitter and these other social media platforms that are independent of the Russian government,

that's been a really important place where they can share news about the attacks, like the

real news.

And it's where we're seeing people in Russia coordinating anti-war actions and protests.

There's been a lot of videos on Twitter, for example, of people in Moscow taking to

the streets saying no to war.

...