From debunking footage of an old ARMA 3 video game that was being passed off as an aerial conflict over Ukraine to a 2015 twin explosion video from China being circulated as Russian airstrikes on Ukrainian power plants, fact checkers and teams from social media companies were actively monitoring and disrupting attempts to amplify false information.
“A lot of old videos and images are getting circulated, creating a lot of panic. The ARMA video game footage makes a comeback whenever there is violence,” said Jency Jacob, managing editor at fact-checking website BOOM.
“Some news channels have also run unverified footage. We will have to see how this plays out.”
On Friday, Russia pressed forward into Ukraine and pounded capital Kyiv with missiles, even as Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky sought help from world powers to stave off the attack.
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Ever since the pre-dawn incursion on Thursday, there has been a deluge of misinformation and disinformation, said Saurabh Shukla, founder and editor-in-chief of NewsMobile, an independent fact-checking platform.
“From videos of a game to old videos being uploaded and described as being from Ukraine, we have debunked several such posts,” he said. “In addition to our fact-checking team, we have deployed domain experts dealing with defence and foreign affairs to debunk these posts quickly.”
Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs at Meta (formerly Facebook), said in a tweet that the social media giant had implemented several measures to contain the spread of misinformation on its platforms.
“We have established a Special Operations Center, staffed by experts and native speakers, to respond in real time to remove hate speech or content that incites violence or otherwise breaks our rules,” he said.
“We are taking extensive steps to fight the spread of misinformation and labelling content from state-controlled media and content that fact checkers have rated false.”
Russia, Russia-Ukraine, Ukraine joins the Soviet Union and Vladimir Putin, were among the most-searched terms on Facebook.
The #Kiev hashtag (at 2.5 million posts) was dominant on microblogging platform Twitter, while #STOPWAR (2,52,000), #Ukraine Russia (255,000), #Ukraine under attack (65,600), #Russia Ukraine War (27,800), #Russian invasion (68,700), #Poland (296,000), #Russians (608,000) and #America (774,000) were the other main trending ones on the platform on Friday.
