Thank you! I work in Machine Learning and for the longest time “the algorithm chose this” was an acceptable tech industry defense for bad or nefarious engineering choices. The more awareness people have of algorithmic influence the better.
There is no excuse for being misinformed or uninformed. Every one of us has access to multiple sources of news and opinion at literally the twitch of a finger. If you don’t trust the people to be discerning consumers of information then that’s a tough conversation about the viability of freedom and democracy.
This article is insufficiently boring in its take.
I work in this space (Content Moderation) and it's clear nobody who really does has been talked to.
"Would it be crazy to think they are putting their thumbs on the scale in favor of pro-Russian content?"
Yes.
ByteDance has US engineers and english moderators are not from China. Any demand like "censor Ukraine war would almost certainly immediately leak". Chinese ownership wouldn't survive, it's barely survived now and they haven't even done anything. That would be a very expensive one-time information control effort.
Some key points you are missing for a more boring explanation:
1) Human moderators / content labelers are mostly not American.
2) Human Video moderation is extra expensive because you have to watch the whole thing and extra hard to label right.
3) Read the details of the actual guardian article: The real objection is that it's NOT censoring "bad" Ukraine content. Study is highly misleading. (see below)
4) Chinese and US apps are effectively different apps (this is the case for pretty much everything).
5) You aren't seeing Chinese content moderations (no ghosts allowed). You ARE probably seeing everyone in the world not-China which != US/UK.
6) Different countries have radically different content standards especially for under 18. Some examples:
China: No ghosts. You can have up to 3 skeletons, but they have to be cute.
Germany: Naked people ok. Guns bad.
US: Naked people bad. Guns ok.
Saudi Arabia: different...
Ask yourself the boring question:
"Which country is any human moderator doing ENGLISH language content moderation / labeling likely to hail from?"
Answer: India.
Boring explanation:
(1) TikTok grew rapidly which typically means they didn't have time to localize moderation standards much beyond a China / not-China separation. And not China has a lot of variation that's hard to satisfy quickly and it's not just about the US.
(2) Not much human moderation / labeling going on.
(3) To the extent that it is: Indian Content Moderation has different cultural biases than US journalists / US Foreign policy types.
(4) Many US ByteDance engineers there likely feel active political censorship at scale (lets be clear that this is the ask) should be resisted even if there currently is a bit of "war hysteria" in the air.
Study Details:
The algorithm here is clearly just doing item-item similarity and returning things you like. If you watch a video all the way to the very end that means you REALLY REALLY like it. The researchers clearly set their "test" up to sucker gullible journalists by watching every video to the "very end".
It's as if Facebook let you click on the "like" button 10 times.
Basically they kept telling TikTok they REALLY REALLY like Ukraine "Disinfo" videos and were "surprised" it kept recommending similar videos.
Excellent comment. Thanks for this info. It is very hard to trust random takes on TikTok bias when you can shift the algorithm to show you anything you want by just watching more of something, as you describe.
What if "Meta", an inarguably domestic company started promoting content with a serious one-sided political bent and did so quietly, but perhaps even ultimately admit that they sometimes find content advantageous to Meta and push that...
What would you do then? Any answer for what to do about TikTok should fundamentally not be different from the answer to this hypothetical.
The ashes of TikTok could always come back around for another round and utilize the services of a sympathetic US citizen to tweak the content algorithm.
If CBS airs a special about how Biden is awesome/the devil, that falls under the Fairness Doctrine - but that matters because broadcast airwaves were granted BY the FCC and were limited spectrum, so it makes some sense it doesn't want them getting political.
AFAIK the NYTimes opinion pages can say whatever they want and there is no issue on fairness doctrine here - and all sorts of papers do "endorsements" for voting.
What if Netflix airs a special about the same thing? Is this a political donation we have to look for and they have to say "paid for by..." Even if Netflix pays for it?
What if Tiktok/Facebook promoted certain politicians but not others via "the algorithm". Is that like the NY Times/my local paper or is that like CBS (true - we aren't selling 'bandwidth' but network effects in particular make some of these more monolithic)
The ability of media outlets to promote particular candidates is at least partially limited by campaign finance laws. I don't know a lot on that specific issue, but I'm aware that Forbes Magazine got tagged by the FEC for "in-kind" campaign contributions to Steve Forbes' 1996 presidential campaign. See very high level summary here: https://www.fec.gov/legal-resources/court-cases/fec-v-forbes/
Are we not ultimately a society that believes in private enterprise & private ownership?
I can't believe so many call for the seizing of private property (TikTok).
While it's true that we've had laws and standards about broadcast television, both as to ownership concentration within a market and as to certain disallowed ownership, this was all predicated on the nature of broadcast spectrum's limited physical availability coupled with the attendant imperative to use that limited resource to best serve the public.
Note that while RT was never allowed to establish broadcast stations in the US, they were certainly allowed to be carried by cable & satellite television systems. Some may have chosen to carry the channel to fill out their line up, but apparently it has now been revealed that many systems got paid by RT themselves to be carried on their networks. This was, until very recent sanctions specifically against RT & Russia, permitted.
This is not really applicable on the Internet. There's not a limited resource here. TikTok came out of nowhere and quickly gained eyeballs. The next big thing will be like that, too.
We've got to do better about educating the eyeballs consuming this media on how to consume information critically and to avoid falling to propaganda.
I recently finished the book ‘Active Measures’, which is a fascinating history of disinformation from about 1920-2020. One theme is that disinformation is a specifically potent way for closed societies to prey on divisions in open societies. The existence of online social networks vastly simplified and sped up the work of disinformation, which had previously involved influencing journalists. Control over those algorithms would be an unprecedentedly powerful and undetectable way to undermine democracies.
If we can make TikTok store American user data on American servers, why don't we just reserve the right to audit their algorithm—not the source code, but the way it is tuned and what kind of top-down decisions are shoved into it. That's pretty much how we treat or own social media companies, hauling them in front of Congress to bitch about who is allowed where and what gets amplified, etc. and threatening them with regulation. Social media companies already tailor algorithms by country, in response to varied laws and to cater to different populations. So it's not like TikTok doesn't already have an America Setting for theirs.
Isn't this literally an infringement on the 1st amendment? Choosing what to publish when and to what market (even a market of an individual viewer) is literally and directly both editorializing and publishing. Which in our system of law are protected acts. Specifically designed to protect both an offensive speaker and an offensive message. Does this have pernicious consequences? I'm sure. But I'm also pretty confident the only legitimate way to approach it is constitutional reform.
Private companies can regulate speech on their platforms however they see fit. I am not even close to being any kind of lawyer, but it seems clear that the government can regulate distribution channels up to and including the content itself. That's why you don't hear the f-word on broadcast television and why your local ABC affiliate doesn't air porn at 3:00 AM. Also, TikTok is clearly biasing their algorithm in censorious ways that restrict speech that the Chinese government does not approve of; the regulation I am suggesting would lead to less censorship and bias TikTok towards less restrictions on speech.
95% of people who've worked on these sorts of "algorithms" would disagree with the statement "TikTok is clearly biasing their algorithm in censorious ways that restrict speech that the Chinese government does not approve of".
The guardian article is extremely misleading, verging on disinformation itself.
Groups like the one cited fundraise off of these "studies" that are catnip for donors, journalists, and political consultants who want to hear that the 2016 loss against a historically unpopular candidate wasn't due to incompetence, group-think, and unpopularity.
And 95% of Chinese citizens would agree that the Chinese government is a benevolent force for good under the wise leadership of Xi, whose love of the Chinese people entitles him to rule for life. So it must be true!
The reason you have regulation on the broadcast TV is that the airwaves are a limited resource and so the content must serve the broadest public interest. HBO (on cable or satellite or internet) is distributed any number of ways and can say whatever they want 24/7 without government review or regulation.
Sure, but 'except in the case of limited resources' is not in the First Amendment. I'm just saying that if the FCC can tell FOX what it can and cannot put on broadcast television, it should also be able to tell TikTok what it can and cannot censor without violating the First Amendment.
I confess that because this was a Trump proposal, I never took it seriously. But the US government is probably the place that this sort of responsibility should lie. Where this gets really tricky is that this tack is really only possible because TikTok is a mobile app, and the two major mobile platforms primarily use US-based technology. What if TikTok were primarily web-based? Could the government order it to be stricken from DNS? Is that even technically possible?
There are a lot of legal complexities and I know I'm not anticipating every argument, but in general I think that ownership is not considered a form of speech; and even within the use of interstate commerce for media communication, there are speech standards that the government has enforced in the past such as limiting vulgarity and providing a mix of different viewpoints. I'm not sure the current legal status of all of that, especially the old equal time mandate, and I understand that some of the legal limitations were at play in stopping Trump's demand for bytedance to sell. But I imagine there is a way for Congress or the FCC to establish a rule that allows them to step in if speech is being specifically suppressed by a foreign power using US interstate commercial resources.
Curious as to whether anyone who comments here is a continuing and regular Tik Tok user. I am too old, and while one of my kids was very into it in the earlier teen years, he has already abandoned it at 19 and so I am wondering if Tik Tok is something that a sizable number of people are using for years at a time or something that a lot of people try out and then mostly abandon after the novelty wears off.
I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned this, but it seems the whole problem with TikTok is that it is a fabulous video platform which became wildly successful while video platforms created by American firms like Facebook have been utter shite. TikTok apparently excels at ease-of-use while American attempts at video apps were clumsy and lacking in features. What happened to American technological ingenuity?
Matt’s argument here (which I’ve seen in others like Ben Thompson) is absurd and hypocritical. Even if TikTok's algorithm is 100% controlled by the PRC government, it competes freely and fairly in the open US market. It’s not a monopoly and has not abused its power in anti-competitive behaviors. Banning TikTok would be philosophically contradictory to not only our principles of free speech, but also that of market economy.
This was a pretty bad piece, I usually expect better from Matt. I assume it is because Matt doesn't use TikTok. Imagine writing a long article about Twitter having only read other people's takes and studies on how often Ukraine misinformation was seen.
Under 30s probably have favorable views on Russia because they grew up in the '1980s called and want their foreign policy back' phase of liberal ideology. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1409sXBleg) The way the red scare and Cold War are taught in history classrooms and the politicization of views on Russia probably also contribute.
re: TikTok and the algorithm, I tend to agree that where the algorithms can be avoided, they should. I certainly hope Matt is doing his part and remembering to set his Twitter, Next-door, and Facebook to be chronological. This is a required step to making them not be hate machines, but the US platforms are tricky and like to periodically revert the setting (for engagement, obv).
The 'accountant' thing is a reference to a TikTok meme/trend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqdchLYNEPY Not a nefarious censorship thing. Something folks don't really seem to understand is that while FYP is heavily moderated for new recommendations, once you follow someone, TikTok will mix in content from the people you follow.
I agree that China shouldn't control a major US media platform, but acting like this is somehow China's fault is bizarre and gives a huge pass to US interests who caused this problem. Specifically Vine, and Twitter killing Vine, caused this problem by identifying a clear market need, then leaving it empty for nearly a decade. Something I wish people in the US understood is that we have a responsibility to be good at our jobs, compete vigorously, do good work, and make sure that we are putting forth competitive offerings such that we don't leave giant market gaps for Chinese competitors.
Imagine clutching pearls over China when US tech companies are 100% responsible for this situation. It's not the vibe.
There was an opportunity to intervene before TikTok became a big deal (think spring/summer 2019) but of course the US missed that. Had US leadership been effective, they could have gone to YouTube and Instagram and said, "Can you please make Reels/Shorts competitive ASAP and not wait until TikTok hits critical mass?" https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/style/what-is-tik-tok.html
Perhaps we could have also asked Facebook/Instagram/Twitter to make their algorithms not absolute dumpster fires of conflict and hate. TikTok is competitive because TikTok made a competitive product, and I'd like to see more emphasis on making something better than TikTok (surely if you believe in western values you agree it is possible) rather than trying to have the US government pick winners and losers. Doomscrolling is not a thing on TikTok.
Thank you! I work in Machine Learning and for the longest time “the algorithm chose this” was an acceptable tech industry defense for bad or nefarious engineering choices. The more awareness people have of algorithmic influence the better.
There is no excuse for being misinformed or uninformed. Every one of us has access to multiple sources of news and opinion at literally the twitch of a finger. If you don’t trust the people to be discerning consumers of information then that’s a tough conversation about the viability of freedom and democracy.
Related: this is a *very* favorable treatment by the New York Times of the deliberate errors in the census.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/us/census-data-privacy-concerns.html
This article is insufficiently boring in its take.
I work in this space (Content Moderation) and it's clear nobody who really does has been talked to.
"Would it be crazy to think they are putting their thumbs on the scale in favor of pro-Russian content?"
Yes.
ByteDance has US engineers and english moderators are not from China. Any demand like "censor Ukraine war would almost certainly immediately leak". Chinese ownership wouldn't survive, it's barely survived now and they haven't even done anything. That would be a very expensive one-time information control effort.
Some key points you are missing for a more boring explanation:
1) Human moderators / content labelers are mostly not American.
2) Human Video moderation is extra expensive because you have to watch the whole thing and extra hard to label right.
3) Read the details of the actual guardian article: The real objection is that it's NOT censoring "bad" Ukraine content. Study is highly misleading. (see below)
4) Chinese and US apps are effectively different apps (this is the case for pretty much everything).
5) You aren't seeing Chinese content moderations (no ghosts allowed). You ARE probably seeing everyone in the world not-China which != US/UK.
6) Different countries have radically different content standards especially for under 18. Some examples:
China: No ghosts. You can have up to 3 skeletons, but they have to be cute.
Germany: Naked people ok. Guns bad.
US: Naked people bad. Guns ok.
Saudi Arabia: different...
Ask yourself the boring question:
"Which country is any human moderator doing ENGLISH language content moderation / labeling likely to hail from?"
Answer: India.
Boring explanation:
(1) TikTok grew rapidly which typically means they didn't have time to localize moderation standards much beyond a China / not-China separation. And not China has a lot of variation that's hard to satisfy quickly and it's not just about the US.
(2) Not much human moderation / labeling going on.
(3) To the extent that it is: Indian Content Moderation has different cultural biases than US journalists / US Foreign policy types.
(4) Many US ByteDance engineers there likely feel active political censorship at scale (lets be clear that this is the ask) should be resisted even if there currently is a bit of "war hysteria" in the air.
Study Details:
The algorithm here is clearly just doing item-item similarity and returning things you like. If you watch a video all the way to the very end that means you REALLY REALLY like it. The researchers clearly set their "test" up to sucker gullible journalists by watching every video to the "very end".
It's as if Facebook let you click on the "like" button 10 times.
Basically they kept telling TikTok they REALLY REALLY like Ukraine "Disinfo" videos and were "surprised" it kept recommending similar videos.
Excellent comment. Thanks for this info. It is very hard to trust random takes on TikTok bias when you can shift the algorithm to show you anything you want by just watching more of something, as you describe.
Let's try a mental exercise.
What if "Meta", an inarguably domestic company started promoting content with a serious one-sided political bent and did so quietly, but perhaps even ultimately admit that they sometimes find content advantageous to Meta and push that...
What would you do then? Any answer for what to do about TikTok should fundamentally not be different from the answer to this hypothetical.
The ashes of TikTok could always come back around for another round and utilize the services of a sympathetic US citizen to tweak the content algorithm.
I'm curious about something else.
If CBS airs a special about how Biden is awesome/the devil, that falls under the Fairness Doctrine - but that matters because broadcast airwaves were granted BY the FCC and were limited spectrum, so it makes some sense it doesn't want them getting political.
AFAIK the NYTimes opinion pages can say whatever they want and there is no issue on fairness doctrine here - and all sorts of papers do "endorsements" for voting.
What if Netflix airs a special about the same thing? Is this a political donation we have to look for and they have to say "paid for by..." Even if Netflix pays for it?
What if Tiktok/Facebook promoted certain politicians but not others via "the algorithm". Is that like the NY Times/my local paper or is that like CBS (true - we aren't selling 'bandwidth' but network effects in particular make some of these more monolithic)
The ability of media outlets to promote particular candidates is at least partially limited by campaign finance laws. I don't know a lot on that specific issue, but I'm aware that Forbes Magazine got tagged by the FEC for "in-kind" campaign contributions to Steve Forbes' 1996 presidential campaign. See very high level summary here: https://www.fec.gov/legal-resources/court-cases/fec-v-forbes/
I'm curious how much of that jurisprudence might be revisited in the aftermath of Citizens United.
Are we not ultimately a society that believes in private enterprise & private ownership?
I can't believe so many call for the seizing of private property (TikTok).
While it's true that we've had laws and standards about broadcast television, both as to ownership concentration within a market and as to certain disallowed ownership, this was all predicated on the nature of broadcast spectrum's limited physical availability coupled with the attendant imperative to use that limited resource to best serve the public.
Note that while RT was never allowed to establish broadcast stations in the US, they were certainly allowed to be carried by cable & satellite television systems. Some may have chosen to carry the channel to fill out their line up, but apparently it has now been revealed that many systems got paid by RT themselves to be carried on their networks. This was, until very recent sanctions specifically against RT & Russia, permitted.
This is not really applicable on the Internet. There's not a limited resource here. TikTok came out of nowhere and quickly gained eyeballs. The next big thing will be like that, too.
We've got to do better about educating the eyeballs consuming this media on how to consume information critically and to avoid falling to propaganda.
I recently finished the book ‘Active Measures’, which is a fascinating history of disinformation from about 1920-2020. One theme is that disinformation is a specifically potent way for closed societies to prey on divisions in open societies. The existence of online social networks vastly simplified and sped up the work of disinformation, which had previously involved influencing journalists. Control over those algorithms would be an unprecedentedly powerful and undetectable way to undermine democracies.
If we can make TikTok store American user data on American servers, why don't we just reserve the right to audit their algorithm—not the source code, but the way it is tuned and what kind of top-down decisions are shoved into it. That's pretty much how we treat or own social media companies, hauling them in front of Congress to bitch about who is allowed where and what gets amplified, etc. and threatening them with regulation. Social media companies already tailor algorithms by country, in response to varied laws and to cater to different populations. So it's not like TikTok doesn't already have an America Setting for theirs.
Isn't this literally an infringement on the 1st amendment? Choosing what to publish when and to what market (even a market of an individual viewer) is literally and directly both editorializing and publishing. Which in our system of law are protected acts. Specifically designed to protect both an offensive speaker and an offensive message. Does this have pernicious consequences? I'm sure. But I'm also pretty confident the only legitimate way to approach it is constitutional reform.
Private companies can regulate speech on their platforms however they see fit. I am not even close to being any kind of lawyer, but it seems clear that the government can regulate distribution channels up to and including the content itself. That's why you don't hear the f-word on broadcast television and why your local ABC affiliate doesn't air porn at 3:00 AM. Also, TikTok is clearly biasing their algorithm in censorious ways that restrict speech that the Chinese government does not approve of; the regulation I am suggesting would lead to less censorship and bias TikTok towards less restrictions on speech.
95% of people who've worked on these sorts of "algorithms" would disagree with the statement "TikTok is clearly biasing their algorithm in censorious ways that restrict speech that the Chinese government does not approve of".
The guardian article is extremely misleading, verging on disinformation itself.
Groups like the one cited fundraise off of these "studies" that are catnip for donors, journalists, and political consultants who want to hear that the 2016 loss against a historically unpopular candidate wasn't due to incompetence, group-think, and unpopularity.
And 95% of Chinese citizens would agree that the Chinese government is a benevolent force for good under the wise leadership of Xi, whose love of the Chinese people entitles him to rule for life. So it must be true!
Ha, OK, 95%. So you've never really interacted with "Chinese citizens" AND you don't know anything about software engineering.
The funny thing is that neither of those things is remotely true, which is why I am so cynical about about TikTok and the Chinese government.
The reason you have regulation on the broadcast TV is that the airwaves are a limited resource and so the content must serve the broadest public interest. HBO (on cable or satellite or internet) is distributed any number of ways and can say whatever they want 24/7 without government review or regulation.
Sure, but 'except in the case of limited resources' is not in the First Amendment. I'm just saying that if the FCC can tell FOX what it can and cannot put on broadcast television, it should also be able to tell TikTok what it can and cannot censor without violating the First Amendment.
idk man, banning TikTok seems like a pretty effective way to get a ton of otherwise-tuned-out voters really angry and amped to vote against you.
Not really, they’re all 15.
I confess that because this was a Trump proposal, I never took it seriously. But the US government is probably the place that this sort of responsibility should lie. Where this gets really tricky is that this tack is really only possible because TikTok is a mobile app, and the two major mobile platforms primarily use US-based technology. What if TikTok were primarily web-based? Could the government order it to be stricken from DNS? Is that even technically possible?
Let's back up a minute and talk about law before implementation. How is this not a clear and definitional 1st amendment infringement?
There are a lot of legal complexities and I know I'm not anticipating every argument, but in general I think that ownership is not considered a form of speech; and even within the use of interstate commerce for media communication, there are speech standards that the government has enforced in the past such as limiting vulgarity and providing a mix of different viewpoints. I'm not sure the current legal status of all of that, especially the old equal time mandate, and I understand that some of the legal limitations were at play in stopping Trump's demand for bytedance to sell. But I imagine there is a way for Congress or the FCC to establish a rule that allows them to step in if speech is being specifically suppressed by a foreign power using US interstate commercial resources.
Once Biden bans TikTok, at least we'll finally have a solid explanation for why young voters hate him.
Curious as to whether anyone who comments here is a continuing and regular Tik Tok user. I am too old, and while one of my kids was very into it in the earlier teen years, he has already abandoned it at 19 and so I am wondering if Tik Tok is something that a sizable number of people are using for years at a time or something that a lot of people try out and then mostly abandon after the novelty wears off.
I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned this, but it seems the whole problem with TikTok is that it is a fabulous video platform which became wildly successful while video platforms created by American firms like Facebook have been utter shite. TikTok apparently excels at ease-of-use while American attempts at video apps were clumsy and lacking in features. What happened to American technological ingenuity?
Matt’s argument here (which I’ve seen in others like Ben Thompson) is absurd and hypocritical. Even if TikTok's algorithm is 100% controlled by the PRC government, it competes freely and fairly in the open US market. It’s not a monopoly and has not abused its power in anti-competitive behaviors. Banning TikTok would be philosophically contradictory to not only our principles of free speech, but also that of market economy.
This was a pretty bad piece, I usually expect better from Matt. I assume it is because Matt doesn't use TikTok. Imagine writing a long article about Twitter having only read other people's takes and studies on how often Ukraine misinformation was seen.
Under 30s probably have favorable views on Russia because they grew up in the '1980s called and want their foreign policy back' phase of liberal ideology. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1409sXBleg) The way the red scare and Cold War are taught in history classrooms and the politicization of views on Russia probably also contribute.
re: TikTok and the algorithm, I tend to agree that where the algorithms can be avoided, they should. I certainly hope Matt is doing his part and remembering to set his Twitter, Next-door, and Facebook to be chronological. This is a required step to making them not be hate machines, but the US platforms are tricky and like to periodically revert the setting (for engagement, obv).
The 'accountant' thing is a reference to a TikTok meme/trend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqdchLYNEPY Not a nefarious censorship thing. Something folks don't really seem to understand is that while FYP is heavily moderated for new recommendations, once you follow someone, TikTok will mix in content from the people you follow.
I agree that China shouldn't control a major US media platform, but acting like this is somehow China's fault is bizarre and gives a huge pass to US interests who caused this problem. Specifically Vine, and Twitter killing Vine, caused this problem by identifying a clear market need, then leaving it empty for nearly a decade. Something I wish people in the US understood is that we have a responsibility to be good at our jobs, compete vigorously, do good work, and make sure that we are putting forth competitive offerings such that we don't leave giant market gaps for Chinese competitors.
Imagine clutching pearls over China when US tech companies are 100% responsible for this situation. It's not the vibe.
There was an opportunity to intervene before TikTok became a big deal (think spring/summer 2019) but of course the US missed that. Had US leadership been effective, they could have gone to YouTube and Instagram and said, "Can you please make Reels/Shorts competitive ASAP and not wait until TikTok hits critical mass?" https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/style/what-is-tik-tok.html
Perhaps we could have also asked Facebook/Instagram/Twitter to make their algorithms not absolute dumpster fires of conflict and hate. TikTok is competitive because TikTok made a competitive product, and I'd like to see more emphasis on making something better than TikTok (surely if you believe in western values you agree it is possible) rather than trying to have the US government pick winners and losers. Doomscrolling is not a thing on TikTok.
P.S. Matt's take on TikTok showing Ukraine disinformation is also bad; TikTok has shown me plenty of content that aligns with the pro-western view that Russia is committing atrocities and the Ukrainians are fighting in righteous self-defense of their sovereignty. I think Twitter is equally concerning here. https://mythoslabs.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Part-III-Analyzing-Twitter-Disinformation-and-Propaganda-Related-to-Russian-Aggression-Against-Ukraine.pdf