Twitter Accounts Sharing Video From Ukraine Are Being Suspended When They're Needed Most (theverge.com) 146
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: As Russian troops and armored vehicles begin moving into Ukrainian territory, social media accounts sharing images and videos from the eastern Donbas and Luhansk regions have been a crucial source of information, sharing footage of Russian helicopters heading toward Crimea or tank divisions moving to the border. But as the conflict intensifies, many researchers sharing this primary material taken from social media -- commonly known as open-source intelligence or OSINT -- have found their Twitter accounts unexpectedly suspended.
On the night of February 22nd, OSINT researcher Kyle Glen was locked out of his account for 12 hours, according to tweets from Glen and a post shared by another OSINT organization. Security analyst Oliver Alexander also claimed to have been locked out of his account twice in 24 hours. Outside of the Anglosphere, the French-language OSINT account Neurone Intelligence, Spanish-language account Mundo en Conflicto, and Brazilian OSINT account Noticias e Guerras were also affected. A Twitter thread compiled by Nick Waters, an analyst at the pioneering OSINT organization Bellingcat, lists more account suspensions. In a tweet, Alexander shared a screenshot with a message stating that the account had been locked for violating Twitter rules, though the exact rule violation was not specified.
Researchers raised concerns that the account suspension could have been part of a mass reporting campaign intended to disable OSINT accounts during a Russian invasion. In a statement, Twitter spokesperson Elizabeth Busby said that action had been taken against these accounts in error and was not part of a coordinated campaign. "We've been proactively monitoring for emerging narratives that are violative of our policies, and, in this instance, we took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error," Busby said. "We're expeditiously reviewing these actions and have already proactively reinstated access to a number of affected accounts. The claims that the errors were a coordinated bot campaign or the result of mass reporting is inaccurate." When asked what content policies the suspended accounts were believed to have violated, Busby pointed The Verge to Twitter's synthetic and manipulated media policy, which deals with the sharing of misinformation on the platform. For those interested in a live map showing the current areas of conflict in Ukraine with corresponding social media posts/media, check out Liveuamap.
On the night of February 22nd, OSINT researcher Kyle Glen was locked out of his account for 12 hours, according to tweets from Glen and a post shared by another OSINT organization. Security analyst Oliver Alexander also claimed to have been locked out of his account twice in 24 hours. Outside of the Anglosphere, the French-language OSINT account Neurone Intelligence, Spanish-language account Mundo en Conflicto, and Brazilian OSINT account Noticias e Guerras were also affected. A Twitter thread compiled by Nick Waters, an analyst at the pioneering OSINT organization Bellingcat, lists more account suspensions. In a tweet, Alexander shared a screenshot with a message stating that the account had been locked for violating Twitter rules, though the exact rule violation was not specified.
Researchers raised concerns that the account suspension could have been part of a mass reporting campaign intended to disable OSINT accounts during a Russian invasion. In a statement, Twitter spokesperson Elizabeth Busby said that action had been taken against these accounts in error and was not part of a coordinated campaign. "We've been proactively monitoring for emerging narratives that are violative of our policies, and, in this instance, we took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error," Busby said. "We're expeditiously reviewing these actions and have already proactively reinstated access to a number of affected accounts. The claims that the errors were a coordinated bot campaign or the result of mass reporting is inaccurate." When asked what content policies the suspended accounts were believed to have violated, Busby pointed The Verge to Twitter's synthetic and manipulated media policy, which deals with the sharing of misinformation on the platform. For those interested in a live map showing the current areas of conflict in Ukraine with corresponding social media posts/media, check out Liveuamap.
WW2 (Score:5, Insightful)
Anschluß - Russia says nearly all Crimeans want to be part of Russia and annexes it.
Sudeten Crisis - Russia says most Donbas residents are Russian and invades it.
What's next according to that pattern?
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joshua says to do an all out attack (Score:2)
joshua says to do an all out attack
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And during such time when the world is occupied with Russian imperialist ambitions, China will also invade Taiwan without any real consequence and then begin to conquer territories in and around the south china sea. I would be surprised if the two leaders did not discuss these plans of action during their recent summit and even coordination of such plans. Will be interesting to see how China spins the invasion of Ukraine as they have traditionally espoused the idea of the sanctity of sovereign borders (Tai
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And by "Russian" I really meant Putin, and by "China" I really meant Xi and the CCP. Let's never confuse the citizens of both countries, the vast majority of which we have no quarrel and are not our enemies, with the ambitions of their presidents.
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Re: WW2 (Score:2)
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Oh really, as if our censorship system does not consider every Russian a tool of the kremlin? Or even anyone who gives an argument in favor of Russia?
Re WW2 and careful politics (Score:3)
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OMG, Trump is nuts over this, claiming that it would never have happened under his brilliant leadership. And before the invasion, Trump completely blurted out that it was "wonderful" how Putin engineered this. Wonder how many on-the-fence Republicans finally stand up and say enough is enough.
And as for the deluded, Tucker Carlson is breaking from the Fox stance and seems to be saying that Putin is not so bad really compared to Biden (who despite being a devout catholic is strongly anti-Christian according
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While Ohio never is (or was), Alaska is a Russian region (or, at least, it was until 1865 or so).
Re: WW2 (Score:2)
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They will soon start needing Lebensraum too..
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Russia invaded them before, and this time the roads are even paved!
Re:WW2 (Score:4, Insightful)
Putin's goal is clearly to annex Donbas .. it's pretty obvious from this video, watch the body language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
This is territorial expansion. The world was supposed to move past territorial expansionism after WW2 ended. Paranoid leaders always resort to nationalism and then expansionism.
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This is territorial expansion. The world was supposed to move past territorial expansionism after WW2 ended. Paranoid leaders always resort to nationalism and then expansionism.
You forgot the communist expansionism after WW2. The "cold" war contains a lot proxy wars that killed many people.
Re:WW2 (Score:4, Interesting)
Putin's goal is pretty obvious, and it has nothing to do with those areas. Only someone utterly swallowed by anglo propaganda would be this ignorant. It has to do with ensuring that Ukraine cannot function as a staging area for invasion into Russia proper in 20 years time, when Russian demographic collapse hollows their military out to the point where their current borders become indefensible. Who comes over them is irrelevant to Russians, because theirs is the second most invaded nation in history. They really don't care if it's going to be Chinese, Turks, Poles or Americans next time. They just know that the next one is coming, because that's their history. Someone is always coming for Russia. The only people more paranoid than Russians in this regard are Poles. And just like Russians, they have a very good reason to be paranoid, for theirs is the most invaded nation in history.
So there are generally three likely scenarios, none of which are "expansionism". Russia doesn't want to expand, it wants buffers against NATO so it doesn't need as much military staged on its borders to prevent Barbarossa v2, which definitionally requires buffer nations between itself and NATO. Both US and Russian military agree on this fundamental strategic point. The disagreement is on whether Russia's concerns about its security should be listened to and acted on or not. Russians have clearly decided that further talking is pointless and it's concerns will not be heard, so it has to do diplomacy through other means. War.
My bet is on the splitting of Ukraine into Russian belt (Odessa to Kharkiv), Polish belt (Lviv), Hungarian belt (West side of Carpathians) and neutral belt (Kiev). Western two belts go to each of the NATO members who have been eyeing them for a while as they're historically theirs. Areas from Odessa to Kharkiv will become Russian protectorates a la two Donbass pseudo-republics and Central Ukraine will be left to rot just like Ukraine was largely left to rot for last thirty years, as no one will want to sink money into it any more as it loses its value to both actual sides of the current long term geopolitical conflict. That being USA and Russian Federation.
The main question is whether Russian military will stay as primary occupiers, or if it will simply pull Syria style intervention, where it comes into areas where popular support is on their side only (hence my bet on them not going beyond Kharkiv-Odessa line where they have decent popular support), and let locals who support them establish new borders and continue the fight the same way people in Donetsk and Luhansk did. And they just sit in their bases and provide strategic and tactical command & control as well as air support to those locals. That's a scenario Russian military trained for for last half a decade in Syria, and something they know how to do very well at this point.
As for "end of history" narrative, the answer is still "no". The history moves on, always. Whoever thought that humans have just suddenly evolved in a few decades and became the kind of ubermensch that just no longer acts the way it acted for countless millenia in the past has to be living in one hell of an ivory tower, ignoring things like Syria and Turkey, Libya, India and Pakistan, Australia and surrounding islands, and yes, even US. Guantanamo Bay is still pseudo-US territory, is it not?
We're still human, and we still act as humans do.
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"it wants buffers against NATO so it doesn't need as much military staged on its borders to prevent Barbarossa v2, which definitionally requires buffer nations between itself and NATO. Both US and Russian military agree on this fundamental strategic point"
USA has also lots of military staged on its borders. As Canada and Mexic are strong allies, the only borders remaining are the world's oceans and airways - where USA has staged (or can deploy very quickly) more military might than (possibly) the rest of NA
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We are the baddies.
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There are no baddies in geopolitics. There are merely interests of the state.
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If that's true, then there is no such thing as civilisation; we're just apes with nukes.
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If that were true, there would be about seven billion less of us.
Re:WW2 (Score:4, Insightful)
It's an interesting way of observing the situation, but the permise that Russia has something to "fear" about its borders is not strategically correct anymore. Russia has nukes. It does not fear any invasion. Even a new European Hitler would not be foolish enough to try invading Russia and get his country flattened by a retaliation strike.
If you read Putin's whole discourse, the one he gave on the evening when he declared that he officially recognizes the two lands as independent, it seems to me that his ultimate plan is to get Russia back to the borders it had prior to the Soviet revolution and the subsequent losses at the end of WWI. He keeps referring to History in his discourse as a justification to the invasion of Ukraine. But if you look at the actual history, Ukraine is just one piece of the cake. Most of other East European countries are at risk, including the ones that are members of NATO (Estonia, Lettonia, Latvia, and Poland).
Maybe my point of view is pessimistic, but I think the parallel with Anschluß and Sudeten Crisis is pertinent, and I wouldn't be surprised this escalates further.
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You're confusing reality now with reality in 20 years. US has been dead set on getting ballistic interceptors working. In twenty years, around the time when Russia's demographic collapse will likely go critical for its defense capability, they just may succeed.
As for "all I know is WW2, so all wars are like WW2 to me" anglosphere argument, the answer is still no. Russia hasn't even annexed the two pseudo-republics/protectorates, in spite of them begging, pleading and screaming for Russia to do so for last s
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Russia annexed Crimea and invaded Georgia and effectively annexed that area. The reason they have not yet stolen the east parts of Ukraine where there is fighting is because there is not a majority support there for Russia there, and because Ukraine is fighting back. Putin calls this genocide but anyone with a brain knows this is false. Russian speakers without a stake in fight have fled the separatist areas, most of them fleeing westward. The reason the separatists chose that time to rise up was because
Re: WW2 (Score:2)
What next - coming to protect the Russians in Estonia? A land corridor through Lithuania so they can effectively protect Kaliningrad?
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Estonia does not have nearly as much Russian speaking minorities as Luthuania and Latvia, because they never got the same full blow Russification treatment that the others did. The Czars engaged in Russification, and the communists did too, just send in lots and lots of Russian speakers and set them up as the high status citizens. However Putin quicly accused Estonia of being nazis when they decided to move the hated statue glorifying their occupation to a cemetary near the edges of town. Apparently Putin
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Most invaded nation was also at a time when many nations were invaded by the same people. Napolean invaded many peoples not just Russia and yet Russia sometimes act as if they were the only ones. And yet, the Age of Napoleon is over, this is not something rational people fear. Hitler invaded USSR, as well as many other countries. Germany then did not attack a peaceful USSR who was remaining strictly neutral either, they joined the allies two weeks after Germany invaded Poland; and Stalin quickly annexed
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Moreover, Russia would never have invaded Ukraine had the latter kept its nuclear arsenal.
Obviously, firing a nuke is the moment when we are all fucked (and I mean, "all" of us.) But they are the ultimate deterrent when the trigger is tied to specific conditions (a first strike, an invasion, etc.)
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It has to do with ensuring that Ukraine cannot function as a staging area for invasion into Russia proper in 20 years time, when Russian demographic collapse hollows their military out to the point where their current borders become indefensible.
And this is an absolute bullshit argument. NATO membership for Ukraine (and George) has been officially off the table since Bush Jr left office. Most NATO countries reject adding Ukraine to the alliance, thus making Ukraine's membership impossible.
We all forget that it was the demand for closer EU ties (EuroMadian) that got Putin's bearskin all curled up. He can't possibly allow closely kin folk developing their own democracy and economy in a manner independent of his whims.
Now, let's be clear, Bush Jr
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Not so sure about the NATO part. Those early countries fundamentally never really wanted to be a part of USSR (the baltic states) or the Soviet Bloc (Poland, etc). At the time, Russia was in a bit of a shambles as well, Yeltsin was a bit of a mess. Those countries were basically saying, "holy shit, we just escaped from the basement cell where this deranged monster had been abusing us, please ally with us before he catches and drags us back!" The countries that managed to get some form of democracy that i
Re: WW2 (Score:2)
A neutral belt? There is no such thing as neutral, at least not for more than a short time. Putin is already talking BS about spiritual space for Russians which is basically Lebensraum.
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Vlad is the leader of a bear with a dying military. The average Russian unit is one over-the-horizon attack away from not existing. The air force is nothing but targets for advanced NATO fighters. The once mighty, well-trained, Soviet Navy is now a rusted shel
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They don't need to be a superpower. They don't even need much of a military. They are going to overpower Ukraine and I can't think of one single country that is going to lift a finger to assist. The nuclear weapons are all they need to keep the wars small and winnable. If one single NATO member comes to Ukraine's aid directly, we will have WW3. Nobody but Russia is willing to have that happen.
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Ukraine actually has many paths to victory, long shots --- but they exist. Though it's not certain they can pull it off. Russia is not invulnerable.
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We allow it not because Russia is a superpower, but because they have nukes. When Putin says "instant retaliation" you know what he is implying.
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And you also know he won't do shit other than saber rattle.
Because the millisecond a nuke strike launch has the missile fires lit there are 30+ other countries that have mutual aid pacts that would insta-slag the area it was launched from, all the strategic cities in Russia, and probably the kremlin to boot, with their own nukes. That's what MAD is all about.
Even with nukes he can't fight even as few as 2-3 countries that also have nukes, as they will have more, and given Russia's track record with guidance
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A more creative mind might also consider the possibility ofintervention as a way to stop Kiev from ethnically cleansing the eastern chunk of the country
Because, of the two countries in this conflict, Ukraine is the one you fear of ethnic cleansing? Why exactly would they suddenly start doing that when it has never happened before?
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, after all, it is an AC, spouting Russian propaganda.
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Remember, Stalin removed Tatars from Crimea. Ethnic cleansing. Really, Tatars have more right to Crimea as their homeland than Russians do. So a song at Eurovision in the recent past won when it sang about how this deportation happened. Putin immediatley called it propaganda, presumably implying this was not ethnic cleansing at all.
This is because Putin considers the Soviet Union to have been a great thing, but messed up due to Lenin's actions whereas Stalin's actions were correct. That is: Lenin allowed
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Is it really a civil war? Russian soldiers, real ones not local Russian speaking Ukrainians, crossed the border to do or assist in the fighting. The cliam at the time was that these soldiers did this on their own time and were not sent on orders from the Kremlin. But given that just prior to this Putin lied out his ass about Crimea then laughed it all off, it seems consistent that Putin would have lied about this also.
There is NO ethnic cleansing going on in eastern Ukraine, that's another of Putin's lie
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Don't be so sure that China will back Russia. They might walk on a fine line, but they are more motivated by money than anything else lately.
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The (almost certain to come) CO2 sanctions and carbon taxes over Chinese industrial production will make them a consumer of Russian gas.
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Ukraine's border guard just stated that Belarus is actively supporting Russians in Northern Ukraine.
It's also really sad how in anglosphere, the only war people know of is WW2, and everything is through that lens. It's almost like Poland isn't the most invanded country in known history, and Russia isn't the second most invaded one. WW2 is just a short blip in region's history of warfare.
Truly when all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. Opinionated ignorance is one of the most da
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the only war people know of is WW2, and everything is through that lens
It's bad enough that WW2 is only taught as if it were one war and that it relates primarily to Germany and the Nazis. I didn't learn until many years out of school how many different conflicts and proxy wars were going on at the same time before they all sort of intermingled.
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Probably because to America it was just the three Axis powers that they worried about. Meanwhile there was a whole mess of border redrawing going on, constant invasions, redressing of old grievances, etc. Russia absolutely was a major aggressor and that invaded and occupied a lot of countries, but being an Ally it was kind of let go for a bit, but was major cause for concern as the war wound down and USSR and its newly acquired territories were viewed with great suspicion and dread. Russia probably consid
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Please name all the invasions of Russia in modern history (WWI or after). Then list all the times USSR and Russia invaded others. Then compare those numbers.
But Ukrainian People's Republic doens't count as Russia in WWI, but Ukrainian SSR does count as USSR. Though it's a tie in Polish-Soviet war because Ukrainian SSR fought Ukrainian Nationalists. In WWI and the era before and after, there were tons of fighting between the whites and the reds, nationalists versus socialists, everyone getting into the ac
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Belarus is already a puppet state to Putin, they didn't make an appeasement pact, it's more like a "let me kiss your ass" pact. Lukashenko depends upon the Russian military to keep him in power, just in case his own military starts getting doubts now and then. As for Putin, the only thing he wants in return is a guarantee that there will never be any form of weak democracy there and only the perfunctory but pre-ordained elections duplicating what happens in Russia itself.
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Officially, yes. After Mussolini's deposition the provisional government that replaced him declared war on Germany while the Germans occupied the country to continue the fight against the Anglo-American forces in Italy. The provisional government was close to utterly powerless, though, so that didn't make much difference. There was significant Italian anti-Nazi partisan activity, but that was spontaneous and not organized by the government.
not just Donetsk and Lugansk (Score:2, Informative)
Explosions are being heard near Odessa, Nikolaev, Kiev, Kharkov.This covers most of the Eastern Ukraine.
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You listed several different regions in Ukraine, and I am fascinated to realize I recognized so many of them. I never thought I would know Ukraine in such detail.
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Explosions are heard in all locations with air bases. Odessa isn't anywhere near Eastern Ukraine, it's in South-Western Ukraine. And Russian cruise missiles are going into air bases in Western Ukraine already. They're doing standard "full suppression of air defenses" in accordance with doctrine pioneered by US in first Iraq war.
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Odessa is 150 km away from NATO eastern flank (Romania, shortest distance by air). Two of our military airports are 300 km away from Odessa, and the NATO Deveselu missile interceptor base is 550km away from Odessa.
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Hmm, Biden and his administration kept saying it would happen. And the time frames kept getting shorter and shorter. Eventually one reporter asked an official "could it be tonight" and the official implied strongly that it very well could happen, and in a few hours the invasion began.
Remember that when Putin claimed he was pulling back and military exercises were over, the administration quickly cried fowl because the build up kept going on. I don't know anyone in the admin saying not to worry.
Ok which one blew up the Twitter? (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
"Violative narratives" (Score:3, Insightful)
"monitoring for emerging narratives that are violative of our policies"
Interesting that we have now publicly transitioned from policy-violating content to policy-violating narratives.
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There have been a huge influx of fake tweets. This always seems to happen, it's like people get paid for views or something so they're intent on being first to get out some big picture. Except that pictues or videos turn out to be something that happened in the past and are relabeled. So "here are the paratroopers coming in" was an old photo, even though there really were paratroopers coming in.
Also there have been deliberate fakes from the separatist regions as well, possibly adding to excuses for Russi
The one good Twitter use case (Score:5, Insightful)
People used to be able to tweet breaking news from the field using SMS, if that was all that was available. That option quietly disappeared a couple of years ago. Now if they're censoring breaking news for fear of retaliation by Vladimir Putin. The neutering of Twitter is complete.
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You can find all the relevant information, including video footage on Telegram. Which is why we've been hearing about need to censor Telegram over last few years.
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Telegram has been flooded with fakes though. As bad as Twitter is, it's light years more reliable than Telegram.
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I'm confused as to why you bring this up in a thread about live video being present on online services. It's obvious that it's choke full of everything right now, including the things you're complaining about.
Thing is, during warfare this widespread, real information drowns out premade fake stuff, because you can't fake enough material.
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It's more likely that because these posts are in Russian (it's the mostly commonly spoken language in the areas being invaded) they are getting caught up by the system that identifies Russian propaganda accounts. Russia creates huge numbers of fake accounts so Twitter uses automated tools to identify and ban them.
The fake Russian accounts have been tweeting fake stories about violence against ethnic Russians in the disputed regions. Suddenly a bunch of genuine Russian speaking accounts start tweeting about
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. Outside of the Anglosphere, the French-language OSINT account Neurone Intelligence, Spanish-language account Mundo en Conflicto, and Brazilian OSINT account Noticias e Guerras were also affected.
Doesn't really explain why Spanish language Twits were also being blocked.
Funny who these mistakes seem to favor/hurt (Score:3)
And on so many topics, and so consistently. Turned out "Bernie Bros" didn't throw chairs, or ever demand "Speak English!", and it took a long time for any kind of barely reported corrections to get issued.
And yet warmongers rarely get bad rulings or bad reporting applied to them. And wow if they've been wronged are the corrections made very prominently.
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Just because you notice it harming people you care about doesn't mean it does not harm others. After all, Twitter also buried the Hunter Biden NYPost article that was completely factual.
There's always TikTok (Score:4, Interesting)
According to The Economist, one of the main sources of open-source intelligence about Russian maneuvers is dashcam footage of tanks, posted to TikTok. Usually with a thumping bass soundtrack.
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Enquiring minds want to know!
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I saw an interesting tweet showing some of the photos published by Russia of the meeting between Putin and his subordinates. It was supposed to have taken place in the evening, but some of their watches were visible showing that it took place in the morning.
Compare time scales (Score:4, Insightful)
Compare reaction times between blocking right-wing misinformation and propaganda vs. reaction times blocking the reporting of right-wing actions.
There's an underlying pattern there, if only we could discern it...
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I've taken to tagging obvious fascists on social media so they're easier to ignore in the future. I'm not on Slashdot much, but I've just made sure I'll never see another one of your posts.
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Pravilno, moi drug? Pravilno?
Nice "mea culpa" (Score:4, Interesting)
"So turns out we accidentally intervened to undermine resistance to aggressive incursion by a hostile nation state, thus materially supporting that regime in its conquest and collateral loss of life. It wasn't like they asked us, it was just a slight misfiring of the massive shadow censorship apparatus we built for quashing domestic dissidents, haha. You just thought it was bots because we don't usually tell people when we're using it. Nothing weird, just normal things for a single tech CEO to be able to decide for the world at large."
Wow, free speech was good, who knew? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Better to just flag the content as "disputed" and the like. Maybe that's too hard, or gets people more upset than just outright removals?
Hard to independently verify media claims (Score:2)
If local observers are having their accounts suspended it's going to be hard to verify the claims in the media.
seems pretty obvious who benefits from such activity. right.
9gag (Score:2)
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Ya, no one's stupid enough to visit a web site with "gag" in the name. Unless they're into that sort of stuff, and I'm not here to judge if they are.
And so it begins... (Score:2)
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Unlikely. China doesn't seem anywhere near ready, and it's not like Russians want to grab Ukraine as a nation either. They want their buffer state, and that requires neutrality.
Which was their demand from the start. That Ukraine be excluded from NATO and forced to remain neutral. Since they didn't get assurances on that from diplomacy, they're now apparently enforcing their demands via warfare. War is sadly still "diplomacy by other means".
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"They want their buffer state, and that requires neutrality."
That didn't stop them from staying in - let's say Moldova - even when the President and Parliament was pro-Russian.
Next time try to remember:
"How do you know a politician lies?"
"His lips are moving"
Also, Serbian language belongs to the "South Slavic" sub-group. Along with Bulgarian and Macedonian. So, who's to tell where Russia will stop?
(Tsarist Russia got involved in Serbia's war of independence against the Ottoman Empire, so that's another hist
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They'll probably stop in Florida. After all, Trump was a Russian puppet.
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Idk, thinking someone is a genius does not equate supporting him. I'm not a pro-trump person, but I acknowledge he did a good analysis of the situation.
Also he is right when he said that Russia wouldn't have dared invading another country during his term. Putin wouldn't have risked triggering a military reaction from an unpredictable crazy American president.
He invades now because he knows the more sensible and not-crazy Biden won't retaliate.
That's why it's not always a bad thing putting crazy people in po
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No they don't. Though I'm sure that anglosphere news media does.
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Um, he literally said that Ukraine is not a real country in his speech announcing the invasion of Ukraine, did you not watch the hour long speech?
Perhaps you should check back with your handlers, you seem to be diverging from the narrative that Putin is trying to build up.
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Never go Full Brandon!
Gee (Score:2)
Twitter and facebook are pro-fascist (Score:2)
Twitter and facebook both want authoritarian rule and desire the russian government model.
That is why they are inherently pro-republican pro-trump pro-white-supremacy.
Probably could have been avoided completely... (Score:2)
Probably could have been avoided completely if NATO members dropped any support for, or at least put a moratorium on the idea of Ukraine becoming a NATO member, keeping NATO away from Russia's borders. That idea was notably missing from the media narrative on Ukraine.
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No, that idea was repeated over and over. And then over and over again. And the NATO clearly and unambiguously said that Ukraine was not under consideration. What Putin wanted though was a signed agreement good for all time that Ukraine would never join, ever, even after the heat death of solar system.
But, once the troops started building up at the border, I think it was inevitable that there would be an invasion no matter what happened. The decision had been made.
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That's demonstrably not true. There's been plans in the works for Ukraine's accession into NATO under a "Membership Action Plan" since 2008. It's true that Russia wanted a "guarantee" -- which may be unreasonable, however, that's what diplomacy is all about: starting from unreasonable positions (on both sides) and reaching a compromise -- I've not seen any serious discussion of a moratorium. If anything the rhetoric has gotten stronger in recent years, with statements like this:
"On 16 December 2021, NATO
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I think at this time that Putin was going to invade anyway, no matter what. He's not a waffler, if he makes a bad decisions with poor information he sticks to it. And he know that any guarantee is impossible, a signed agreement can always be torn up later, as he is familiar with how to do the tearing. All the negotiating was just to give him time to get pieces into position and to give him a position to be seen on the world stage in order to impress his homies.
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That's entirely possible, though a serious offer to keep NATO away from Russia's border for at least several years would have made an invasion look that much worse. Unfortunately, we'll probably never know if a concerted diplomatic effort would have helped now, since it's too late.
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There was a concerted diplomatic effort. But it's impossible to guarantee forever that Ukraine will never join NATO without also denying that Ukraine has literally no right to self determination which is opposed to the core principles of all NATO members.
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I've lost track, are we talking about Voldemort here?
Re: (Score:2)
USA already clearly stated quite a while ago that they aren't going to have any direct military response to anything happening in Ukraine.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, if Putin liked multiple times about invading, maybe Biden is allowed to lie at least once?