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Elon Musk’s Changes to Twitter Helped Spread Russian Propaganda: EU

“The reach and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts has grown further,” a study says.

Under Elon Musk, Twitter’s policies allowed Russian propaganda about Ukraine to run wild on the platform and spread to more users than before the war began, according to a study released this week by the European Commission. “Over the course of 2022, the audience and reach of Kremlin-aligned social media accounts increased substantially all over Europe,” the study states. “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 European Union’s research concluded that if its social media law, the Digital Services Act, had been enforced last year, Twitter would have violated it by permitting the spread of misinformation and hate speech. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, was also found to have helped boost Russian extremists and propagandists, according to the study. The EU is now cracking down on false information on social media, requiring companies to be subjected to auditing and stop their algorithms from spreading hateful content.