Six House lawmakers are calling on Meta to stop paid ads from Chinese news companies that push Russian misinformation regarding the war in Ukraine. ​​Matt Skibinski, General Manager, NewsGuard Technologies joins Cheddar to discuss the role of social media in this war.

None of the Above 

Lawmakers Push Meta On Paid Ads Pushing Russian Misinformation

Welcome back, this is none of the above. I'm JD it's Tuesday. Thanks for watching a group of bipartisan lawmakers are calling out the social media giant meta on its policy towards paid advertisements from chinese state sponsored media. According to a report from Axios, the state controlled china Global Tv network placed 21 ads on meta owned facebook. Many of the ads feature newscast pushing pro Russia. Talking points about the ongoing attacks in Ukraine, there is no shortage of lies and misinformation from the Kremlin that much assure misinformation has been steadily spreading on Russia from Russia rather regarding its unprovoked Ukraine invasion and social platforms have been scrambling to try and stop it. Lawmakers say these companies have not been doing enough focusing on Russia and allowing china to spread the same false narratives. They want an answer from meta by the end of the month joining us now to discuss more about this is Matt Skibinski matters General Manager at News Guard Technologies. Matt, my man, it's been a minute. Nice to see you again. Thanks for being on the show. Great to have you. So when you look at what the lawmakers are asking meta, is it reasonable? Is there a sense that they're actually going to help at all? How do you see this? Yeah, I think you know it's completely reasonable to ask technology platforms like meta and by the way also like google and other platforms. Um to take some basic precautions on their platforms with regard to how they amplify and sometimes directly fund state sponsored misinformation and you know what what you saw with with facebook or meta with google with some of the other platforms immediately after the invasion was that they took some steps to block either advertising on or from or content from Russian state owned media sites, which is a great first very small step. But as we know, you know the way that misinformation spreads and disinformation campaigns work. They rely on large networks of other websites that are not officially state owned. Um you know at news guard we've identified over 140 domains that are spreading Russian disinformation narratives about Ukraine. Many of them have programmatic ads from Google. Many of them are not sanctioned in any way on Facebook or even labeled and you know the same is true. Some of those are also you know known Chinese state sponsored disinformation and propaganda outlets. So there are a lot of holes in the current policies of the platforms have implemented. Matt, can you tell us who some of those other domains are? I'm really like legitimately interested to know not all of them, obviously just a few of them. It's such a wide range um you know, we we did some reports about this from News Guard. Um there's a site called Pravda which is kind of the digital descendant of a newspaper that it was registered as a foreign agent in the United States during the Cold War. You know that still was running strong with google ads as of maybe a week ago when we did that report, and still today. Um there are domains that are anonymous that we don't know if they're directly funded or controlled by the Russian government, but that target us audiences that, you know, sort of have an anonymous ownership. We don't know who's producing content. And you can see that they're repeating those narratives. One that we mentioned in one of the reports we did was called Veterans Today dot com. Again, I don't know if that site is, I'm not saying that site isn't is controlled by the Russian government by any means, but the fact is that there are many sites that are spreading the same narratives and we don't know who's behind them and they're continuing to be funded by uh by the platforms in one way or another. Matt help me better understand. What exactly are some of the what is some of the propaganda? What are some of the lies that we are seeing emanate from the Kremlin or Russian backed entities. We know a lot of them have to do with with fundamentally misrepresenting the state of Ukraine and the state of some Ukrainian people. Um, but I'm curious what what do we know that that's that's sort of coming out or at least trying to be disseminated to Russian citizens within the boundaries of the country. So we've cataloged dozens of false narratives that are spreading about Russia and about the Ukrainian invasion from Russia. There's a couple of flavors of those one is narratives that are intended to justify the invasion of Ukraine. So, these, for example, Russia was very strongly pushing the argument that the Ukrainian government is controlled by nazis. Um it was strongly pushing the narrative that Ukraine was developing dangerous bioweapons, um that that might be used to harm Russia. Um, and that Ukraine was engaged in a genocide of uh, you know, Russia, ethnically Russian or Russian speaking people in Ukraine, any of which, you know, if true would certainly muddy the water if not outright justify taking some kind of military action. So that's one flavor. And then the other flavor is uh, you know, false claims about the conflict itself. And who started it claims about, you know, Ukrainian troops being the first aggressors, um, claims about, you know, particular actions uh, supposedly horrific actions taken by Ukrainian soldiers against either civilians or Russian people, but all intended to kind of do uh, two totally discredit the Ukrainian military action. Um, and so both of those, there's there's many narratives within each of those two categories and other categories that, that are out there. Speaking of the authoritarian playbook, what is china's role in all of this? And and how are any chinese backed entities helping fan the flames of this type of disinformation. Yeah, I think you've seen some of those narratives I mentioned amplified by chinese, either state affiliated or media outlets in china that um, you know, there's at least some control from the chinese government that can be exerted on them, even if they're not official state outlets. And um you know, if you think about it from from china's perspective, they're sort of in a position right now where, um on the one hand, they haven't overtly interfered in either side of the war, in Ukraine there to some degree trying to stay neutral, but they may have a, you know, a preference in one direction or the other. And so, um, you know, amplifying narratives that they didn't start. That started from Russian state media, but that are helpful to the chinese kind of goals on the international stage is one way of getting involved in the war without getting involved in the war itself. All right. Matt Skibinski is General Manager at News Guard Technologies, Matt, I appreciate your perspective on a busy news day, part of a busy news week, matt. Thanks