New Delhi: After posting tips for users on how to keep their accounts safe amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Twitter has now announced it will label all tweets that contain content from Russian state-affiliated media websites, the media has reported. This is another step from the micro blogging site, in a bid to check the misinformation war around the Russia-Ukraine crisis.
According to Yoel Roth, Twitter's Head of Site Integrity, the platform would start labeling links to Russian state-affiliated news sites, such as the English-language Russia Today (RT), national news agency TASS and others and make the affiliation clear. With the labeling on such tweets, if a user tweets a link to a story from RT and TASS a warning box will pop-up it with an orange exclamation point and text: "Stay Informed: This Tweet links to a Russia state-affiliated media website."
Earlier, the company had applied these labels only to accounts linked to national governments, such as RT and Sputnik. The “overwhelming majority” of content from state-backed Russian media -- more than 45,000 tweets a day -- is being tweeted by individuals, not media accounts, Twitter said Monday in a statement. Twitter said it would be applying a similar policy to state-backed media outlets from other countries “in the coming weeks”, according to a report published by news agency Bloomberg.
Earlier last week, amid the rising conflict between Russia and Ukraine, social networking giant Facebook and Twitter started suggesting users in Ukraine to lock and close their accounts, to prevent Russia from hacking and spreading disinformation via the manipulated social media accounts. Twitter's corporate account and Facebook's director of threat intelligence suggested measures to the users in Ukraine that included what to do if an account was hacked to closing an account amid safety concerns.
Twitter Safety had posted a link explaining how to create a strong password, how to require an email and phone number for password reset requests and find out if your account has been compromised. David Agranovich, Meta's (formerly Facebook) director of threat intelligence also tweeted additional measures for Ukrainians to protect their accounts.
Both Twitter and Facebook are often used by political activists and researchers to disseminate information during times of crisis and that is why both the social networking companies listed pertinent points to protect the social media accounts of Ukranians.