As EU says it’ll ban Russia’s ‘toxic media machine’, social media firms face pressure to act

Late yesterday the European Union announced an “unprecedented” step against Russian disinformation, saying it would ban Kremlin-based media outlets, Russia Today (aka RT) and Sputnik — extending measures targeting the country following president Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and to saw division in our Union,” said the EU’s president, Ursula von der Leyen. “So we are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe.”

Details on the EU’s planned ban on Russian state media content are still thin on the ground.

At the time of writing EU officials we’ve spoken to were unable to confirm whether or not the ban will extend to online platforms such as Google’s YouTube — where RT and Sputnik both have a number of channels, and the US platform hosts thousands of videos they upload for viewing on demand as well as enabling them to reach viewers via livestreaming.

However in the past few hours EU officials have been cranking up the public pressure on mainstream tech platforms on the disinformation issue.

Today the office of internal market commissioner Thierry Breton announced that both he and the values & transparency commissioner, Vera Jourova, had spoken to the CEOs of Google and YouTube urging them to step up efforts against Russian propaganda.