Big Tech Allows Russia State-Affiliated Accounts to Have 38.7M Followers — Banned Trump

Russia-affiliated Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts are allowed to continue to influence the 38.7 millions of their followers, even though Russia is attacking Ukraine. 

This means Russia’s state-affiliated accounts can influence 38 653,027 people around the world while they invade Ukraine. They are also the platforms which banned Donald Trump, former U.S. president, in January 2021.

Vladimir Putin, Russian president, is a shining example. His combined followers number 4.9million his two verified Twitter accountsHis Kremlin-verified YouTube channel has 46,100 subscribers, while he is overseeing the invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s state-affiliated media outlet RT boasts even more followers, at 3,000,000 on its verified Twitter accountOver 7 million fans on the verified Facebook page. RT is also the “most watched news network on YouTube” with “more than 10 billion video views on all platforms last year” according to RT’s verified YouTube channel. Forbes reported that YouTube temporarily removed Russian-affiliated channels from YouTube and placed restrictions on them in Ukraine. In 2021, however, Donald Trump’s former president was removed from YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. 

In all, MRC’s Free Speech America on Monday afternoon found that Russia state-affiliated accounts had 17,906,200 Twitter followers on 22 accounts, 16,050,727 Facebook followers on 15 accounts and 4,696,100 subscribers on two YouTube accounts. Russian state-affiliated social networking accounts have an estimated 38.7 Million followers.

Big Tech has come under increased pressure from Russia to do something online. A Russian regulator will reportedly “partially restrict access” to Facebook. Forbes reported that the social media platform restricted accounts associated to Russia’s Kremlin. Russia calls this censorship. One, Sci-Tech Editor in Defense Patrick Tucker said Facebook in Russia was “now down” on Feb. 25, 2022. Facebook has labeled several accounts as “Russia state-controlled” since Friday. According to reports, Facebook also restricted the access of some Russian-controlled media outlets in Ukraine. The social media accounts whose follower tallies were included in this article are still up, many with very recent posts (including Putin’s Twitter and Sputnik’s Facebook), as of this article’s publication.

One of last week’s articles from Sputnik, which has about 1.8 million Twitter and Facebook followers, claimed, “Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the beginning of a special military operation on Thursday in order to defend the people of Donbass as well as ‘demilitarise and denazify’ Ukraine.” Sputnik posted a still-uncensored article on Facebook in January denying that Russia had plans to “attack any country.” An RT piece also seemingly supported Putin’s claim that he is trying to “denazify” Ukraine. The Twitter account for Russia’s Ministry of Defence (@mod_russia() uses a firing-tank banner photo.

Twitter and Facebook have consistently allowed extremist officials and entities as well as government-affiliated accounts to post what appears to be violative content, even as the platforms continue to censor free speech. In June 2021, more than 751 million people followed accounts linked to the Chinese communist state in genocide on Facebook. A still-uncensored tweetFrom the Chinese state media website Global Times threatened in October to make Taiwan and Australia “cannon fodder,” for example.

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