At least four members of Congress from the United States have signed letters demanding the CEOs of the social media companies Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter to archive any content published on their platforms that might be used as proof of Russian military crimes.
The advent of short-form video has provided unparalleled access to live footage from war zones, not to mention that Meta, YouTube, and Twitter continue to attract our interest. Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-New York), Gregory Meeks (D-New York), Stephen Lynch (D-Massachusetts), and William Keating (D-Massachusetts) believe that social media posts can aid in bringing human rights violators accountable.
Videos depicting violent warfare are frequently banned from social networking sites because they may violate their terms of service. However, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report mentioned in these letters to CEOs indicates that it is unclear what happens to these videos once they are removed from public-facing apps. Facebook, for instance, retains removed data for at least 90 days, but the Human Rights Watch (HRW) has learned that Facebook sometimes stores data for longer periods of time when asked by law authorities.
The representatives’ statement reads, “We are concerned that social media platforms […] do not have adequate procedures in place to archive this content so that it can be made available to international organizations conducting investigations into allegations of war crimes and other atrocities.”
Specifically, the four representatives are urging these platforms to: preserve and archive potentially useful content for an extended period of time; coordinate with international human rights organizations to develop a legal, established way to share such content; increase transparency around AI-based content moderation systems and how they interact with war content; and, create a way for users to flag content that they believe may contain evidence of war crimes.
The HRW report says, “Photos, videos, and other content posted on social media have increasingly supported accountability processes, including judicial proceedings, for serious international crimes on both the national and international level.” Human Rights Watch reports that there have been at least ten instances in Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden in which war criminals from Iraq and Syria have been persecuted using social media posts as evidence.
Despite the fact that this evidence can help international legal systems, these bodies must be cautious not to fall prey to false information, which could be used to facilitate an erroneous conviction. Video game footage purporting to be filmed on the ground in Ukraine has gone viral on social media numerous times since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February.
