On Facebook, Russia, its ally China, and right-wing media outlets and personalities are pushing pro-invasion propaganda and disinformation, including the latest false theory that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was undertaken partly to target U.S.-linked labs working to create bioweapons.
Facebook and other social media companies have taken some actions to restrict Russia’s ability to spread disinformation about the invasion, which includes blocking Russian state media from advertising on the platform. But Facebook is allowing Russian government accounts and state media accounts to remain on the platform and push propaganda with organic posts, while also allowing Russia’s ally China to monetize this propaganda via ads.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, RT — one of Russia’s state-controlled media outlets — has posted at least 12 times pushing the conspiracy theory or related claims, according to data compiled from CrowdTangle. These posts have earned at least 30,000 interactions. Notably, four of the posts are videos that were added on March 8 and 9 falsely claiming U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland confirmed that the U.S. was developing bioweapons in Ukraine. These videos earned nearly 200,000 views and only one of the videos has a label noting that there is “missing context.”
Beyond the videos, there is only one other post from RT about the labs that is labeled as “missing context.”
The other posts from RT that push the conspiracy theory include:
Russia’s propaganda efforts have been bolstered by its ally China and right-wing media in the U.S. also pushing the conspiracy theory. Media Matters has already reported on Meta, Facebook’s parent company, earning revenue on ads promoting the conspiracy theory, including one that was run by Chinese state-controlled media. Since our initial report, at least two additional ads from Chinese state-controlled media have pushed conspiracy theories about U.S.-Ukraine biolabs.
