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Facebook, YouTube bans on RT and Sputnik muffle Russian propaganda | The Washington Post

In the first four days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, viewership of more than a dozen Russian state-backed propaganda channels on YouTube spiked to unusually high levels. Just a couple of weeks later, it dropped to zero after YouTube blocked those channels globally, helping derail one of the most powerful propaganda engines in the world.

Two dozen media channels backed by the Russian government on Facebook experienced similar spikes in traffic, according to a Washington Post data analysis, then plummeted as the company instated a ban in Europe.

The muffling of the megaphone of the Russian state media, which has falsely framed the country’s invasion of Ukraine as “special operation” intended to protect Russian-speaking Ukrainians from Nazis, marks an unprecedented move by the social media giants to stop the spread of misinformation. And early signs show some of the actions may be working.

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Source: Facebook, YouTube bans on RT and Sputnik muffle Russian propaganda | The Washington Post