They are specialized in the fight against disinformation and intelligence in open sources (OSINT) and yet a dozen Twitter accounts were suspended on February 22. They covered the arrival of Russian troops at that precise moment, in the separatist regions of eastern Ukraine. Twitter has acknowledged an error.
Manipulated, manipulator and debunker
Techcrunch and The Verge relayed the messages of members of the Bellingcat media, Aric Toler and Nick Waters, on the disappearance of these ten accounts. Bellingcat is precisely specialized in the search for information in open sources.
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Going to start a thread with accounts following the conflict in Ukraine that have been suspended or locked.
22nd Jan: Suspension of @conflicts and @SchoenbornTrent (who remains suspended)
https://t.co/FAn5jukLNO—Nick Waters (@N_Waters89) February 23, 2022
Its members have been alerted to the suspension of accounts engaging in similar activity. There is an English-speaking media specialist in armed clashes, Conflicts, the French-speaking page Neurone Intelligence, the analyst Alexander Oliver, whose account has been deleted twice, etc.
These accounts have the distinction of closely following Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. They are also involved in verifying information from this region. Great vector of continuous information, social networks such as Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, or Telegram, have also seen an influx of attempts at gross misinformation.
In the days leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, “false flag” videos proliferated. They consist in making believe, thanks to more or less discreet manipulations, in Ukrainian aggressions against the separatists of the Donbass or the Russian troops. Russia, a specialist in the art of disinformation, can then mobilize them to justify an attack, or, at the very least, to destabilize it and obtain the support of its population.
Twitter at the heart of the information war
It is possible that relaying, to deny them, manipulated videos or images is at the origin of the suspension of accounts. Twitter acknowledged ” A small number of human errors as part of our proactive work against manipulated media “. The social network having probably anticipated the surge of false information would have had a little heavy hand.
Several Twitter users feared direct action by Russia at the time to censor posts deconstructing its lies, or locating its troops. The fear here is that of massive reporting to deceive Twitter moderation, which is largely automated.
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s Integrity Manager, firmly dismissed this hypothesis, ” We never trigger automated enforcement actions based on reporting volume, exactly because it would be so easy to take advantage of it. “.
We’re closely investigating — but mass reporting is not a factor here.
A small number of human errors as part of our work to proactively address manipulated media resulted in these incorrect enforcements. We’re fixing the issue and reaching out directly to the affected folks. https://t.co/sxh9IFgug2
— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) February 23, 2022
The suspension of most accounts has been lifted. In parallel with the war, the real one, underway in Ukraine, an information war is intensifying on social networks. Be careful to discern the true from the false. The traditional media remain the safest vector of information in such a confusing situation.