"Civil Liberties Groups Urge Social Media Platforms to Better Protect Free Flow of Information in Crisis Zones" 13 April 2022

Whether in Ukraine or in other crisis zones around the globe, social media platforms have a duty to ensure that people have access to the free flow of life-saving information, according to a statement issued ... by 31 international human rights and civil liberties organizations.

... It has become increasingly clear that platforms have followed the same playbook in Ukraine as they have elsewhere: surface-level or extractive relationships with civil society; insufficient support for local language and lack of understanding of context; and responsiveness to media pressure, not civil society pressure or human rights concerns. The Russian invasion of 2022 was a re-escalation of events that began in 2014, and platforms should have been better prepared.

... “With this statement, we wanted to express solidarity with Ukrainian civil society while pushing social media platforms to do better around the world,” said Dia Kayyali, Associate Director of Advocacy for Mnemonic. “Ukraine, Yemen, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Syria, Sudan—the list of places where platforms need to learn from their failures and be prepared to invest in human rights going forward is far too long.