Courtney Radsch on Tech Firms and the War in Ukraine

CMDS Fellow Courtney Radsch writes about the escalating faceoff between Russia and U.S. tech companies amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The new article for Tech Policy Press summarizes the recent flurry of activities aiming to control the narrative about the war, including the EU’s ban of RT and Sputnik, measures from Google, Meta and Twitter to deny monetization to Russian state media, continued fact-checking on Facebook despite Russia’s efforts to stop it, and the removal of “covert influence operations” by Meta and Twitter.

The article then goes on to questions raised in the context of the war, such as how social media companies should handle state-sponsored terrorism and war propaganda; how the platforms will handle recognition of state accounts if Ukraine’s government falls; whether Tiktok will step up its policies and practices, and whether the platforms will be required to label more outlets as affiliated with the Russian state.