Courtney Radsch in Newsweek on Tech Platforms and the Disinformation War
“Why are leaders in Russia, Iran, China and Saudi Arabia … allowed to use American social media platforms to propagandize when they block many of those same platforms in their own countries?,” our Fellow Courtney Radsch asks in an opinion piece in Newsweek on tech platforms’ responsibility in the disinformation war.
Although after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, American social media platforms have finally started to take steps against state-sponsored disinformation, Courtney Radsch argues they could have and should have done more. Russian state media and government accounts are allowed to stay on the platforms, even if their reach in Europe and Ukraine is restricted. Their accounts have also been demonetized, but why only now, the article asks, calling on tech companies to urgently reconsider their policies regarding state propaganda.
It is not the free and open internet that is responsible for enabling Russian President Vladimir Putin's information operations but the tech platform companies themselves that have allowed his propaganda to flourish even as he has censored free expression in his own country,”
she writes.