Russia-Ukraine war: YouTube, Twitter, Facebook ban Russian ads

In major development, the Social media platforms including YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have made announcements regarding ads on their respective platforms so that users are not distracted by irrelevant information..

Google has prohibited Russia’s state-owned outlet from advertising and earning money on YouTube, the Reuters reported. As per report, YouTube said in a statement that it’s “pausing a number of channels’ ability to monetize on YouTube, including several Russian channels affiliated with recent sanctions.”

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With this ban, channels including RT in question will appear a lot less in recommendations. They will also be restricted in Ukraine due to “a government request”. For the unversed, Ukrainian digital minister Mykhailo Fedorov had earlier requested YouTube to stop Russian propaganda on the platform, the BGR India report said.

Social Media platform Facebook has banned “Russian state media” from running ads and monetizing content on the platform. Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy made the announcement on Twitter recently.

Gleicher tweeted: “We are now prohibiting Russian state media from running ads or monetizing on our platform anywhere in the world. We also continue to apply labels to additional Russian state media. These changes have already begun rolling out and will continue into the weekend.”

Following this, a Facebook blog was published regarding the same topic.

According to Facebook blog, “We’re taking extensive steps to fight the spread of misinformation by expanding our third-party fact-checking capacity in Russian and Ukrainian. We’re also providing more transparency around state-controlled media outlets, prohibiting ads from Russian state media and demonetizing their accounts.”

Micro-blogging site Twitter also announced that it is temporarily pausing ads in Ukraine and Russia so that public safety information is more visible. As per the official tweet, “We’re temporarily pausing advertisements in Ukraine and Russia to ensure critical public safety information is elevated and ads don’t detract from it.”

Twitter has also highlighted a few safety measures that it is taking for people in Ukraine. Twitter is “proactively reviewing tweets to detect platform manipulation” and is taking “enforcement action” against them.