Assessing X’s moderation for content from sanctioned Russian State media

Key takeaways

• European governments decided to apply sanctions on Russia's propaganda machine, including Kremlin-aligned RT and Sputnik, in recognition of their role in supporting the invasion of Ukraine. Consequently, hosting content from these entities is illegal in the EU.
• Such content can readily be found on X/Twitter.
• When officially notified that it hosts illegal content, X/Twitter does not act in over two thirds of cases. In addition, in likely violation of applicable legislation, X/Twitter does not answer to the notice half the time.
• X/Twitter has been aware of the issue for close to a year. Its unwillingness or inability to act raises questions not just about its compliance with the Digital Services Act but also whether it provides economic support to sanctioned entities.
• X/Twitter is prompt to comply with takedown requests in authoritarian countries, suggesting that its "free speech absolutism" ethos is highly selective.

Background & legal regime 

Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, the European Union adopted sanctions against Russian actors (individuals and entities) supporting their country’s war. These sanctions have targeted Russia-sponsored media outlets, the most prominent of them being Russia Today and Sputnik as well as their subsidiaries. As a result, their financial assets have been frozen and it is illegal to have funds or economic resources made available to them. 

In a factsheet updated in May 2024, the European Commission clarified what the sanctions implied for sanctioned media outlets. The factsheet states that : 

• “In the context of the media sector, the Commission considers that the broadcasting of content can be considered an “economic resource”, as such content can be used for advertising products and services. Consequently, broadcasting the content of listed entities is prohibited” (paragraph 10 of the factsheet).

• “The Regulation sets out a number of examples of activities (‘such as’), so it also applies to, for instance, caching services, search engines, social media or hosting service providers whose services can be used to disseminate propaganda from the targeted entities” (paragraph 4 of the factsheet). 

• “The term ‘broadcast’ in conjunction with ‘any content’ is to be understood, in light of the objective of the provision, as covering a broader range of content provision than the term ‘television broadcasting’ used in the Audiovisual Media Services Directive 1 . It should be understood as transmitting, disseminating or distributing any type of content in the broadest possible meaning (long videos, short video extracts, news items, radio etc.) to an audience regardless of the means of transmission, dissemination or distribution, including online” (paragraph 2 of the factsheet).

From the aforementioned extracts of the factsheet, we understand that the diffusion of video extracts from Russian State media outlets Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries, on X in the European Union is illegal and can be considered circumvention of sanctions, which is also prohibited.

Illegal content found on X

Despite the sanctions enacted and the clarifications made by the European Commission, our monitoring shows that prohibited content such as video extracts from Russia Today and Sputnik are easily accessible on X in the European Union. Using an artificial account, we identified and followed three types of accounts reposting content from sanctioned Russian State media outlets: 

• Official accounts from sanctioned media outlets (notably Russia Today India, Sputnik India and Sputnik Africa)
• Official accounts of journalists and political commentators affiliated with those media outlets
• Amplifying accounts reposting the publications containing the illegal content made available by the aforementioned accounts. 

It was quite easy to identify content containing video extract from Russia Today and Sputnik. First we followed the official accounts of the sanctioned media outlets (RT_India, Sputnik India, Sputnik Africa) as well as those of well known journalists and political commentators affiliated with these media outlets (such as Chay Bowes or Salam Mosafir). They can be easily identified thanks to simple Google queries. Then, thanks to the recommendations from X (“who to follow section”) and by identifying some accounts among the followers of the sanctioned media outlets and affiliated journalists that reposted their prohibited content, we were able to identify the “amplifying accounts”.

‍Reporting

To report the spotted illegal posts we used the button “Report EU illegal content”  bringing us to X’s help center, in the section “DSA Digital Services Regulation”. The form was (except for a few exceptions where we tested other legal reasons such as “harmful or illegal speech” for the report) filled as shown below:

119 posts from 32 unique accounts were reported.

Below are examples of flagged posts that remain available to X users in the European Union :

Results

For slightly less than half (51) of the 119 posts reported through X’s Help Center we never received any reply from X on the decision made. In those cases, a few days after the reporting, the content was still available, suggesting that those flags had been outright ignored by X.

Regarding the 67 cases for which we obtained a reply from the platform, the platform found that 24 of them were “not subject to removal under the grounds of DSA law in the EU”. Consequently, the content remained available. It is unclear why X referred to “DSA law” when the flag referred to the EU sanctions regime.

In total, 66% (78 out of 119) of the reported posts containing video extracts from Russia Today and Sputnik were thus left available by X in the days after the report.

Some accounts appear to receive blanket immunity, as not one of them had any of their posts removed (e.g. Sputnik India, Sputnik Africa, Russia Today India). A second group had all their posts removed, and yet another had only some of their posts removed. This difference in treatment is unexplained, as all the content reported was similar. Under a coherent moderation system, an ‘illegal’ verdict in one instance should have translated into an illegal verdict in all instances.

These results raise doubts as to whether X is living up to its obligations under European law as:

• X failed to act on the majority of manifestly-illegal content we flagged to it,
• X failed to answer half of the flags, in seeming contradiction with DSA recital 52.

Our study’s findings echo those of earlier ones by Alliance4Europe and Science Feedback, suggesting that, despite being made aware of the issue for close to a year, the platform remains unwilling or unable to tackle it.

X has reportedly promptly complied with in taking down locally-illegal content or accounts in authoritarian countries (famously, in Turkey, India). X/Twitter's policy team was asked what justified this discrepancy and this report will be updated should we hear back.