Twitter Lifts Restrictions on Russian Government-Backed Accounts
Don’t be surprised if you see tweets from the Russian government or politicians creeping into your Twitter feed. The company has lifted restrictions that prevented Kremlin-backed accounts from reaching users on the social media platform.
The restrictions, which rolled out in February 2022, were designed to prevent Putin’s regime from spreading propaganda(Opens in a new window) on Twitter at the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, has dissolved the limitations, which he says were censorship.
“It is a weak move to engage in censorship just because others do so. Letting our press be free when theirs is not demonstrates strength,” Musk said in a tweet(Opens in a new window) on Sunday.
The restrictions originally applied to Russian state-controlled media outlets, along with Twitter accounts belonging to the Russian government and politicians. At the time, the company said it would no longer amplify or recommend these accounts to users “across the Home Timeline, Explore, Search, and other places on the service.”
However, The Telegraph noticed(Opens in a new window) that Twitter has recently been surfacing tweets from Kremlin-backed accounts in search results, the recommendation engine, and the main Twitter feeds. The company has also nixed a default “Stay informed(Opens in a new window)” label on tweets that linked to Russian state-controlled media outlets.
Musk addressed the matter when an account related to the hacktivist group Anonymous pointed out that Twitter had left up a tweet from Russian politician Dmitry Medvedev that said: “WHY WILL UKRAINE DISAPPEAR? BECAUSE NOBODY NEEDS IT.”
In response, Musk wrote(Opens in a new window): “I’m told Putin called me a war criminal for
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