Twitter 'mistakenly' suspends Ukraine OSINT accounts before Russian invasion

Occurred: February 2022

Twitter mistakenly suspended several accounts that had been sharing footage and intelligence on Russian military movements, prompting concerns about the platform's content moderation policies and practices. 

Twitter said it had mistakenly suspended around a dozen accounts that had been posting about Russian military movements ater Ukraine had declared a state of emergency before Russia's invasion. The platform said the action was not due to a coordinated bot campaign or mass reporting of the accounts by other users, according to CNBC.

In a statement, a Twitter spokesman said 'We’ve been proactively monitoring for emerging narratives that are violative of our policies, and, in this instance, we took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error. We’re expeditiously reviewing these actions and have already proactively reinstated access to a number of affected accounts.'

Yoel Roth, Twitter head of site integrity, tweeted the firm was closely investigating what had happened but said mass reporting was not a factor. 'We do not trigger automated enforcements based on report volume, ever, exactly because of how easily gamed that would be.' 

Operator: Twitter
Developer: Twitter
Country: Ukraine
Sector: Govt - defence
Purpose: Moderate content
Technology: Content moderation system
Issue: Mis/disinformation
Transparency: Governance; Black box

Page info
Type: Incident
Published: February 2022