Instagram to label content from Russian state-owned Media

In an effort to control the misinformation about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Instagram is demoting posts from Russian state-controlled media. The platform has started downranking posts related to the issue in users’ feeds and its stories tool.

The social media platform will also stop recommending posts from Russian state-owned media accounts in the Explore and Reels tabs and will make it harder for users to find these accounts.

If anyone tries to re-share such content, they are informed that it is from the Russian national media. If you want to share it anyway, it will be placed further down the story bar. It will also label stories with link stickers that lead to Russian state-run media websites.

Users who follow personal accounts based in both countries will not be able to see who those users follow or who follows them. These accounts will no longer appear in other people's followers, follower lists, and mutual followers.

The parent company of Instagram, Meta has also banned Russian state-owned media from running ads on Facebook. It first restricted access to Sputnik and Russia Today across the EU and later broadened the restriction to apply globally. Meta also pulled all ads from Russia and ads of Russian marketers from all around the world.

Twitter has also started labelling tweets linked to Russian state-owned media websites. Many other companies including YouTube and TikTok have also banned the state-owned media Sputnik and Russia Today. Apple has also announced that it would pull out these outlets from App Store along with stopping all product sales in Russia.