Why do Twitter do nothing about Ukraine disinformation?

3 points by madaxe_again ↗ HN
Currently, Twitter is awash with disinformation about the Russia/Ukraine war - but seem to be doing very little/nothing to combat it. There isn’t even a “disinformation” report category, just “hateful content” - and nothing is ever counted as hateful content, except for if you say “it’d be a shame if they had an accident”, which will get you suspended from the platform.

So. Would anyone from Twitter care to comment? Is this about conflict driving ad views? Because to me, profiting from a war in which thousands of civilians are dying seems a bit beyond the pale.

5 comments

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What about freedom of speech? BTW Twitter is being slowed down (not blocked) in Russia, that's why Twitter has to take care a little bit about what Russian citizen can read there.
Twitter is not a legitimate source for Wikipedia and never has been.

It is engagement for pleasure, hatred and animosity.

It choose a political side and bunked the heads of authoritarian leaders and big democracies.

It may even been a catalyst for the long brewing Ukrainian conflict.

At which point wasn't it awash with misinformation?

Misinformation and Disinformation aren't the same thing. OP is speaking specifically of Disinformation - the kind that is purposely meant to deceive and lead people astray.
I disagree. I used Misinformation instead of Disinformation on purpose. It broader and not accusing others. The distinction is very much useless.

You define Disinformation as Misinformation with intent. So it would only be a subgroub of Misinformation itself, kinda like apples and honeycrisps. Thoose aren't clearly different in any meaningful way, just more specific.

Intent is something that is very hard to prove and will fail you as broad concept.

Can people transform Disinformation to Misinformation, when they lack intent? Or is any form of sharing on twitter some form of intent, thereby converting all Missinformation to Disinformation?

Seriously! I don't know how these object transfer it's properties.

Disinformation includes a ton of advertisement, crypto NFT pyramid schemes and all kinds of fraud and scams. Purposely used Misinformation to deceive others with clear intent. Quite huge on twitter.

If Disinformation specifically defined as propaganda to deceive people or make them agreeable or "join the cause", you can add a ton of discussions on communism, fascism, socialism, democracy, conservatism, feminism, cult, sekts, diverse religions and so much more to twitters Disinformation. People are lying to convince others, that is clearly Disinformation, or twitters main thing.

Twitter is awash with Misinformation and probably most of it classifies as Disinformation, as soon one can find any form of intent or purpose for it.

If you assume any unchecked information is Misinformation and posting it for retweets and likes is already intent, then everything on twitter is Disinformation.

You should not take anything on twitter at face value, if you can not verify it from a primary source.

Twitter is and will always be awash with misinformation.

> Currently, Twitter is awash with disinformation about the Russia/Ukraine war

Disinformation by Ukraine or Russia? Because if it's Russia, it's trivial to ignore pro-Russia sentiment. Ukraine on the other hand even has its own meme army accounts and tries to humor everyone with memes (that are actually good and not half-baked pro-Russia ones). Largely you will find positive sentiment towards Ukraine on Twitter and not some 2016-style psyop campaign by Russia to sway US elections.