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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.
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Twitter Accounts Sharing Video From Ukraine Are Being Suspended When They're Needed Most

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  • WW2 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2022 @10:42PM (#62297681)

    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?

    • Taking whole Ukraine. Then attack on another country, which leads to declaration of war by other major countries.
      • joshua says to do an all out attack

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        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

        • by caseih ( 160668 )

          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.

          • You're saying it like the two leaders are not the products of their respective societies but some creatures from a totally alien planet.
          • 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?

        • Explicit support for Kiev retaking Donbas might be seen as implicit support for China retaking Taiwan.
        • 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

    • Russia says Ohio is full of Russians and invades it. Little do the fools realize that they are, in fact, invading Ohio.
      • While Ohio never is (or was), Alaska is a Russian region (or, at least, it was until 1865 or so).

    • Think of all the "opressed" russian speakers in baltics. Lots of russians living in Finland also...
  • Explosions are being heard near Odessa, Nikolaev, Kiev, Kharkov.This covers most of the Eastern Ukraine.

    • 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.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      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.

      • 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.

  • by gacattac ( 7156519 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2022 @10:50PM (#62297699)

    "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.

    • 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

  • by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2022 @11:04PM (#62297725)

    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.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      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.

      • Telegram has been flooded with fakes though. As bad as Twitter is, it's light years more reliable than Telegram.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      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

      • . 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.

  • by Babel-17 ( 1087541 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2022 @11:08PM (#62297743)

    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.

    • 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.

  • by mkwan ( 2589113 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2022 @11:14PM (#62297763)

    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.

    • Are the tanks twerking?

      Enquiring minds want to know!

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      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.

  • by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2022 @11:16PM (#62297769)

    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...

  • Nice "mea culpa" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by physicsphairy ( 720718 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2022 @11:19PM (#62297777)

    "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."

  • by EmoryM ( 2726097 ) on Thursday February 24, 2022 @12:24AM (#62297891)
    From the "I saw this coming years ago" department it turns out that stopping the flow of information... stops the flow of information... who could've imagined?
    • 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?

  • 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.

  • Looks like 9gag is better at this than twitter - https://9gag.com/gag/a11PEYw [9gag.com]
    • 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.

  • Next China will doubtless take advantage of these events to invade Taiwan. We can't fight a real shooting war in multiple theatres at this point. The withdraw from Afghanistan made the United States and current administration look like absolute fools. This can very easily escalate into WW3, only this time we have ICBMs. But we also have SM3s, so there's that I guess. $5/gal gas in California today, soon to be $10. I guess you can say that this morning Putin went on TV and basically said "Let's go Brandon!"
    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      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".

      • "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

        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          They'll probably stop in Florida. After all, Trump was a Russian puppet.

    • Never go Full Brandon!

  • Censorship can be used against stuff that we like? That was so unpredictable ...
  • 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 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.

    • 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.

      • by eriks ( 31863 )

        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

        • 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.

          • by eriks ( 31863 )

            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.

            • 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.

The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives. -- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project

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