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According to Alex Stamos, executive director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and Facebook’s former head of security, social media companies have decided to “pick a side” by exercising their discretion over how unverified or false content is moderated.

“I think this shows the limits of ‘factual control’ in a fast-moving war where real lives are at stake,” said Mr Stamos. He added that tech platforms never set rules against misinformation in general, but instead target specific behaviors, actors and content.

This leaves the truth behind some wartime narratives, just as a apparent assassination plot Against Mr. Zelensky or simply number of soldiers killed in the warquite difficult, even when sharing official accounts and news media information.

These narratives continued as the war progressed, revealing the outlines of an information warfare targeting not only Western audiences but Russian citizens as well. At the United Nations on Monday, Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya shared a series of text messages that he apparently received from the dead Russian soldier’s phone.

“Mom, I’m in Ukraine. A real war is going on here. According to Mr. Kyslytsya’s statement, which he read in Russian, the Russian soldier, apparently, wrote, “I’m afraid.” It seemed to evoke a fairy-tale narrative. forwarded by the authorities He shared extensively on social media that Russian soldiers were under-trained, very young, and did not want to fight their Ukrainian neighbors. “We bomb all cities together, even targeting civilians,” he said.

Whether it’s true or not, the story appears to have been tailor-made for Russian civilians, especially parents worried about the fate of their conscripted children, experts said.

“This is a very old tactic that the Ukrainians are trying to use, and it is to divert the attention of mothers and families in Russia from the more glorious aims of the war, but instead to the human costs of war. Focused on Russia, who followed Russian propaganda during the conflict, said historian Ian Garner. “We know it’s really effective.”