Twitter lifts restrictions on official Russian government accounts
3 Min Read
Restrictions imposed on the accounts of Russian government organizations and officials put in place by the previous administration have been removed by Twitter.
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Twitter headquarters shown in San Francisco on November 4, 2022. (AP)
Twitter lifted on Saturday the restrictions imposed on accounts linked to the Russian government after having implemented them in April in light of the Ukraine war and as part of the Western strategy of isolating Russia.
Twitter search results are once again showing the accounts of the Russian Presidency, the Foreign Ministry, and Moscow's embassy in the United Kingdom; these accounts were once blocked from being accessed amid massive restrictions imposed on them in the wake of the war.
Twitter said last year that it would "not amplify or recommend government accounts belonging to states that limit access to free information and are engaged in armed interstate conflict" effective immediately.
The company explained that this would translate as follows: the Twitter accounts of Russian government organizations and officials would not be recommended in searches, the timeline, and other parts of the platform.
British newspaper The Telegraph reported that it carried out tests last week that showed Russian government accounts back at the top of certain search results as well as in the suggested accounts to follow.
Russia is no longer heavily censored on Twitter, and it is appearing in the platform's For You feed, which allows users to see tweets that the service's algorithm has picked for them.
Moreover, it was reported earlier that "Russian state-affiliated media" accounts were popping up on Twitter once more, marking a major shift in Twitter's policy regarding Russia.
Musk at the helm shows policy difference
Remarkably, the "only" difference between last year and this year is that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is at the helm of the blue empire, and he had expressed numerous neutral stances regarding Moscow, contrary to what the collective West has been doing through its practices aimed at isolating Russia.
"It would be exceedingly unlikely that this change would have happened accidentally, or without the knowledge and direction of the company's staff," one former Twitter executive said, according to The Telegraph.
The controversial CEO went under fire in late 2022 for proposing a "peace plan" as a resolution to the Ukraine war, and the main reason for the hate toward him was the fact that his proposal was not biased toward Kiev.
He explained that Russia will probably win the war eventually, thus "millions of people may die needlessly for an essentially identical outcome."
Musk posted his suggestion entailed with a poll on his Twitter account. He proposed that new elections are held in the regions of LPR, DPR, Kherson, and Zaporozhye which have voted to accede to Russia, but this time under UN supervision, with its outcome binding to all parties, while Crimea remains formally a part of Russia with no threat to its water supply and Ukraine be announced as a neutral country, arguing that, "This is highly likely to be the outcome" if the war goes on.
