Liz Wolfe, an associate editor at Reason magazine told the hosts of Hill.TV’s “Rising” Tuesday that blocking Russian state media on social platforms could come at our own peril.
“This is the first wide-scale private company de-platforming that’s in reaction to a geopolitical crisis, so we just haven’t seen something like this at this scale before,” Wolfe said.
“I think that’s a really dangerous thing in part because it’s important to understand what those people on the ground are understanding about the situation.”
“We remove stuff like that at our own peril. I think there’s a middle ground solution where you affix content warning labels to these kinds of things, which Twitter has already done, where you label something state media as opposed to removing it entirely,” Wolfe noted.
“It is important for me to understand what, you know, many, many millions and even billions of people who are reading Chinese state media outlets- it’s important to know what they’re consuming. What types of euphemisms, what types of gloss and sheen is being put on the news,” she added. “I think it’s the exact same case in Russia.”
Wolfe’s remarks come after major technology-related companies and social media platforms have imposed restrictions on information linked to Russian state media following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Facebook announced on Monday that access to Russian state-controlled media would be restricted across the European Union.
Twitter has announced that it would label tweets with links to Russian state-affiliated media websites.
Last week, YouTube paused the ability for Russian media channels to make money from ads on the video-sharing platform.
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