Twitter announced Saturday that Russian users are experiencing restrictions on its platform.
“We’re aware that Twitter is being restricted for some people in Russia and are working to keep our service safe and accessible,” the platform tweeted Saturday. The company did not elaborate on how many users were affected, when the problem began, or which features were being restricted.
A Twitter spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that the platform does experience interference from state actors.
“If we have clear evidence of state-affiliated information operations, our first priority is to enforce our rules and remove accounts engaging in this behavior,” the spokesperson said. “When our investigations are complete, we disclose accounts and content in our public archive.”
It is not yet clear whether the current restrictions were enacted by Russian officials, but Twitter said it will monitor the situation.
“As we do around major global events, our safety and integrity teams are monitoring for potential risks associated with the conflict to protect the health of the service, including identifying and disrupting attempts to amplify false and misleading information and to advance the speed and scale of our enforcement,” the spokesperson said.
“We’re proactively monitoring for emerging narratives that are violative [sic] of the Twitter Rules, including our synthetic and manipulated media policy and platform manipulation policy, as the situation develops.”
Twitter has yet to disclose any accounts it has investigated, and its public archive hasn’t been updated since December of last year.
Twitter began restricting advertisements in Ukraine and Russia on Friday. The platform also announced that it paused tweet recommendations for Ukrainian and Russian users, as to clear their timeline of any irrelevant content.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, similarly reported interference on its platform in Russia. Officials claimed it was a repercussion for Facebook’s censorship of local news outlets. Meta’s Vice President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg said that the platform was only performing regular fact-checking and content-labeling.
The Russian government has experienced its own technical difficulties in recent days. The Kremlin’s site is down, leaving no way to see whether Russia’s tech and communications regulator has made a statement regarding the matter.
