The social media company also said it would
now require the removal of posts depicting prisoners of war posted by
government or state-affiliated media accounts. Ukraine's government has posted
content featuring prisoners of war on social media in recent weeks.
Russia has battled big tech companies to
control information flows after it invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. The Kremlin
calls its actions in Ukraine a "special military operation." Moscow
has throttled access to Twitter by slowing its service and has banned Meta's
Facebook and Instagram.
"When a government blocks or limits access to online services within their state, undercutting the public's voice and ability to freely access information, but continues to use online services for their own communications, a severe information imbalance is created," Twitter said in a blog post.
The company said its new measure of not
amplifying the accounts would apply whether Twitter itself was blocked or not
and that it would first apply the policy to Russian government accounts.
It said under the new rule it would not amplify
or recommend Russian government or state affiliated media accounts, including
on users' Home timeline, or the search or explore functions. A spokesperson
said this would affect more than 300 Russian government accounts.
The company also said it would require
government or state affiliated media accounts to remove any media published
that features prisoners of war. It said in cases where there was a
"compelling public interest" in accessing the content, such as for
evidentiary purposes, it would instead add a warning to the tweets.
During the conflict, Ukrainian government
social media accounts have posted videos appearing to feature Russian prisoners
of war answering questions or making phone calls home. Asked about these posts
on a call with reporters, Twitter's head of site integrity Yoel Roth said such
tweets would be covered by the scope of the new rules but the policy would not
be applied retroactively.
"We don't want Twitter to be used by
state actors to infringe on international humanitarian law and, to the best of
our ability, we want to disincentivize governments from engaging in this type
of behavior," said Roth, citing the Geneva Convention, which protects
prisoners of war against abuses including insults and public curiosity.
Twitter also said it would require the
removal of tweets posted by any user with prisoner of war content shared with
abusive intent.