Four high-ranking Democratic lawmakers sent formal requests to the CEOs of TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook’s parent company Meta asking the social media services to preserve and archive content shared on their platforms that could potentially be used as evidence of Russian war crimes.
The letters were signed by Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., chair of the Oversight Committee; Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee; Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., chair of the Oversight and Reform subcommittee on national security; and William Keating, D-Mass, chair of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Europe, energy, the environment and cyber.
“Social media platforms routinely remove graphic content that glorifies violence or human suffering or could lead to further perpetrations of violence, and have rightfully implemented graphic content policies to protect their users,” the lawmakers wrote.
“However, we are concerned that the processes by which social media platforms take down or block this content—including through automated and artificial intelligence-enabled systems—can result in the unintentional removal and permanent deletion of content that could be used as evidence of potential human rights violations such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.”
Since Russian president Vladimir Putin has unleashed a horrendous and unjustified war in Ukraine in February, Russian forces have repeatedly targeted Ukrainian civilians at schools and residential buildings, including bombing a maternity hospital in Mariupol, a mass killing residents of Bucha, a small town north-west of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, and committing other despicable acts of violence.
The lawmakers said that images and videos of these atrocities have been shared on social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok. If verified as authentic, this content could provide the US government and international human rights investigators with significant evidence to help substantiate allegations of war crimes and other atrocities committed by Russian forces against people in Ukraine.
In April, Meta briefly blocked hashtags related to civilian killings by Russia soldiers in Bucha. The Meta spokesman Andy Stone later explained that hashtags, including "bucha" and "buchamassacre" were blocked because of automated systems that scan for violent imagery on Facebook and Meta-owned Instagram. Facebook and Instagram allow the posting of graphic and violent content when it is shared to raise awareness of possible human rights abuses, but remove the content if it is extremely explicit or celebrates suffering.
Cybersecurity Help statement on the critical situation in Ukraine
On February 24, people in many cities and towns across Ukraine woke up to the sounds of explosions and artillery fire, as the Russian Federation launched a full-scale invasion of the country. Such actions are unacceptable, political ambitions of any man aren’t worth of blood, tears, and destruction of millions of lives. We give our full support to the Ukrainian people in these hard times. No more war! Слава Україні!