“Over the course of 2022, the audience and reach of Kremlin-aligned social media accounts increased substantially all over Europe,” the study found. “Preliminary analysis suggests that the reach and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts has grown further in the first half of 2023, driven in particular by the dismantling of Twitter’s safety standards.” The social media platform was recently renamed X.
The E.U. has taken a far more aggressive regulatory approach to government-backed disinformation than the United States has. The Digital Services Act, which went into effect for the biggest social media companies Aug. 25, requires them to assess the risk of false information, stop the worst from being boosted by algorithms and subject their performance to auditing. Separately, European sanctions on Russian state media have prompted YouTube and other platforms to ban the likes of RT, the Russian news outlet formerly known as Russia Today that was once one of the most-followed channels.
The study is the starkest indication yet that the legal and voluntary measures are not getting the job done, following June warnings from E.U. Commissioner Thierry Breton that X had work to do to avoid potentially massive fines under the DSA. The research was conducted by nonprofit analysis group Reset, which advocates for greater oversight of digital platforms.
Without full access to data held by the companies — data that must be made more available under the new law — Reset relied on public information, such as the number of interactions that problematic content drew from people who had not been following the account that posted it.
Musk’s X was not alone in having failed to stop the spread of Russian propaganda, the study found. Instagram, Telegram and Facebook, owned by Meta, also drew criticism.
“In absolute numbers, pro-Kremlin accounts continue to reach the largest audiences on Meta’s platforms. Meanwhile, the audience size for Kremlin-backed accounts more than tripled on Telegram,” since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, the group wrote. “We found that no platform consistently applied its terms of service in repeated tests of user notification systems in several Central and Eastern European languages.”
Reset senior adviser Felix Kartte told The Washington Post that the myriad propaganda campaigns used hate speech, boosted extremists and threatened national security, potentially influencing European elections next year.
The researchers said the law and the social media companies were not equipped for a full information war of the type Russia has been waging across state-owned official accounts, aligned accounts and others. Russian interests also coordinated actions by volunteers on Telegram channels, such as Cyber Front Z, urging simultaneous posts to manipulate the formulas that boost popular content. They filed false mass claims that pro-Ukraine accounts were violating platform rules to get them suspended, and they intimidated others with doxing and other threats.
Using one key technique, the propagandists first posted numerous messages in unregulated spaces with less traffic, then promoted those postings with links on more popular channels.
“No [social media] platform introduced policies addressing all or even most Kremlin-operated accounts,” they wrote. “In addition, platforms fundamentally ignored cross-platform coordinated campaigns.”
X and Meta did not respond to requests for comment.
Though the main period of study was 2022, “the reach of pro-Kremlin accounts has increased between January and May of 2023, with average engagement rising by 22 percent across online platforms,” Reset found. “However, this increased reach was largely driven by Twitter, where engagement grew by 36 percent after CEO Elon Musk decided to lift mitigation measures on Kremlin-backed accounts, arguing that ‘all news is to some degree propaganda.’”
Musk withdrew his social media platform from the voluntary code of conduct for combating disinformation that was widely propagated in June 2022, and he has eased content rules and cut enforcement staff.
