Instagram will demote posts from Russian state-controlled media to curb misinformation about the Ukraine crisis, the Meta-owned company said. The posts will be down-ranked in the users’ feed and the stories, and if users try to share the content, they will be notified that the posts are from Russian state-run media accounts.
Posts that are shared anyway will appear at the bottom of the stories tray, and stories with stickers leading to Russian state-run media websites will be labelled.
In addition, the company will weed out posts from Russian state-controlled media from Explore and Reels recommendations, and also make the accounts difficult to find in the search tab. Instagram said that it would also hide social ties between Russians and Ukrainians in the accounts.
Read: Cooking Gas Prices Soar Over Russia-Ukraine War
People who follow private accounts of people in the two countries won’t be able to see who those users follow or who follows them. These accounts will also vanish from other people’s Follower and Following lists, as well as from the “mutual follows” feature.
Instagram also said that it will promote tools for bulk-deleting photographs, videos, likes, and comments from accounts in Russia and Ukraine.
Just recently, Twitter began labeling tweets that contain links to Russian state-run media outlets.
A number of Western based companies have halted operations in Russia following the invasion in Ukraine. This week, Netflix, American Express, Audit firms KPMG and PriceWaterHouse Coopers, Google, Microsoft among others, announced that they were no longer operating in the country.
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