In exercising discretion over how unverified or fake content is moderated, social media companies have decided to “take sides,” said Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and a former chief of security at Facebook.
“I think this shows the limits of fact-checking in a rapidly evolving battle where real lives are at stake,” said Mr. Stamos. He added that technology platforms have never set rules against disinformation in general, but rather target specific behavior, actors and content.
That leaves the truth behind some war stories, such as an apparent murder plot against Mr. Zelensky or simply the number of troops killed in combat is quite elusive, even if official accounts and news media share the information.
Those stories continued as the war progressed, revealing the outlines of an information war that was aimed not only at the Western public, but at Russian citizens as well. At the United Nations, Ukraine’s ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, shared on Monday a series of text messages apparently retrieved from the dead Russian soldier’s phone.
“Mom, I’m in Ukraine. There is a real war going on here. I am afraid,” the Russian soldier apparently wrote, according to Mr Kyslytsya’s report, which he read in Russian. The story seemed to evoke a story put forward by officials and widely shared on social media that Russian soldiers are poorly trained, too young and unwilling to fight against their Ukrainian neighbors. “We are bombing all cities together, even civilians.”
The story, true or not, seems tailor-made for Russian citizens — particularly parents concerned about the fate of their enlisted children, experts say.
“This is an age-old tactic that the Ukrainians are trying to use, and that is to draw the attention of the mothers and families in Russia away from the more grandiose goals of war, instead on the human cost of war,” he said. Ian Garner, a historian who focuses on Russia and who followed Russian-language propaganda during the conflict: “We know that this is really effective.”
