Twitter Inc. will stop amplifying Russian government accounts and ask other government-affiliated media to remove posts featuring prisoners of war, it said in a blog post Tuesday that cited international humanitarian law.
It’s the latest example of how social media platforms are attempting to strike a balance that honors freedom of expression amid a flood of harrowing and often manipulative images and accounts being shared from the front line of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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San Francisco-based Twitter said it will add warnings to state-backed accounts’ posts about prisoners when they have a “compelling public interest,” it said in its blog citing Article 13 of the Geneva Convention III.
Twitter will also mandate the removal of posts from any user, state-linked or not, who posts about prisoners of war with “abusive intent such as insults, calls for retaliation, or mocking suffering.”
The site will also immediately stop amplifying or recommending government accounts belonging to states that “limit access to free information and are engaged in armed interstate conflict,” said Twitter vice president of global public policy Sinead McSweeney “We will first apply this policy to government accounts belonging to Russia.”
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