"Social media platforms on the defensive as Russian-based disinformation about Ukraine spreads," 24 February 2022

Russia-backed media reports falsely claiming that the Ukrainian government is conducting genocide of civilians ran unchecked and unchallenged on Twitter and on Facebook. Videos from the Russian government — including speeches from Vladimir Putin — on YouTube received dollars from Western advertisers. Unverified TikTok videos of alleged real-time battles were instead historical footage, including doctored conflict-zone images and sounds.

... [T]he conflict in Ukraine is fast becoming a proving ground over pledges these firms have made to clamp down on disinformation, especially given their insistence they now have a playbook that works... [b]ut plenty of disinformation is still getting through... [A] team within the EU’s diplomatic service that tracks Russian disinformation said it had seen a major increase in Kremlin-backed online disinformation since late January.

... Twitter spokesperson Paolo Ganino said its safety and integrity teams were watching for risks associated with conflicts in the region. TikTok spokesperson Sara Mosavi said the video-sharing platform was removing content that promotes violence or harmful misinformation... YouTube said its teams were watching for so-called false flag operations, deceptive practices, hacking, phishing and incitement to violence... Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said in a statement Thursday it had formed a new unit — created during times of conflict — to respond to potential issues across its platforms staffed with Ukrainian and Russian-speaking experts who could quickly respond to content violations.