Facebook is taking new steps to curb the influence of Russian state media outlets on its platform. The company, which has already blocked access to RT and Sputnik within the European Union and Ukraine, now says it will demote all Russian state media across Facebook and Instagram around the world.

Calling the move “unprecedented,” Meta’s president of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, said the company was making Russian state media “harder to find” on Facebook and Instagram. “We are demoting content from Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts for Russian state controlled media outlets,” Clegg said during a call with reporters. “We have also begun to demote posts that contain links to Russian state controlled media websites on Facebook over the past few days.”

He added that Facebook will also add labels to all links to Russian state media websites that are shared on its platforms in order to “provide more information to people before they share them or to let them know that they lead to state controlled media websites.”

While Facebook has in the past down-ranked certain types of content, like vaccine misinformation, it’s unusual for the company to demote a wide swath of content entirely. RT in particular is prolific on social media, and has millions of followers on Facebook alone. On the call, Clegg called the move “unprecedented,” and noted that Meta has received requests from a number of governments to suppress Russian state media. So far, the company has only blocked the pages entirely in the European Union — following a ban from lawmakers — and inside of Ukraine.

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TikTok has joined Facebook in blocking access to two Russian state media outlets in the European Union. Sputnik and RT are no longer able to post to audiences within the EU, and their pages and content will no longer be accessible to users in the bloc, a TikTok spokesperson confirmed.

TikTok’s move comes as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft have also cracked down on the outlets, which have large followings on social media platforms. Facebook also said Monday that it was blocking access to the publications, and Twitter said it would label all tweets from Russian state media accounts.Those actions come after a broader order from EU officials to ban RT and Sputnik.

Facebook is “restricting access” to two Russian state media outlets across the entire European Union, a move that will prevent the publishers from sharing content to millions of people in the countries. Meta’s President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, announced the block of RT and Sputnik, saying that it was in response to “a number” of government requests from within the EU.

“Given the exceptional nature of the current situation, we will be restricting access to RT and Sputnik across the EU at this time,” Clegg said. The change comes after the European Commission enacted its own ban on the outlets, and after Facebook had already blocked access to ads and other monetization features. The social network had also blocked the publications’ ability to post content inside of Ukraine. 

Clegg didn't elaborate on whether "restricting access" referred simply to these accounts' ability to post and share inside of these countries, or if the accounts would be completely inaccessible in the EU. We've asked Facebook for more details.

The move comes as Russian State media outlets, some of which have vast social media followings, find their reach increasingly limited. Facebook and other platforms have taken more aggressive measures to tamp down the influence of Russia-backed publications in recent days as there has been a sharp rise in disinformation. Twitter announced Monday that it would label tweets from Russian state media accounts, and would try to curb their influence on the platform. YouTube has also blocked the outlets’ ability to monetize their channels. 

Twitter is adding prominent labels to tweets from Russian state media outlets as it tries to limit the publications' reach on its platform.

“Today, we’re adding labels to Tweets that share links to Russian state-affiliated media websites and are taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter,” Yoel Roth, the company’s head fo site integrity tweeted. “Our product should make it easy to understand who’s behind the content you see, and what their motivations and intentions are.”

Roth added that since the invasion, links to Russian state media outlets have been shared more than 45,000 times a day. He said Twitter was also working to “significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter.” The company announced last week that it was pausing ads and recommendation features in Ukraine and Russia.

The company has labeled state media outlets at the account level since August 2020, but those labels only appeared on the account profiles. The new labels will be displayed much more prominently, appearing alongside tweets from these accounts, much like how the company has labeled election and COVID-19 misinformation. The labels will appear on tweets from state run media in other countries in the “coming weeks.”

Twitter isn’t the only platform trying to tamp down the reach of Russian state media outlets following the invasion of Ukraine. Facebook barred Russian state media from accessing ads and other monetization features, and has blocked some outlets’ ability to post within Ukraine.

Facebook has taken down a network of fake accounts attempting to spread Russian disinformation in Ukraine. The company said it had removed about 40 accounts, pages and groups from Facebook and Instagram that were detected over the last 48 hours. The company has also worked to stop hacking attempts targeting Ukrainians military and government officials on recent days.

In a briefing Sunday night, Meta’s Director of Threat Disruption David Agranovich said the accounts in question hadn’t yet gained a large following when they were identified by the company’s security researchers. He said the accounts had about 4,000 followers and Facebook and about 500 on Instagram.

The fake personas, which were targeting people in Ukraine, were being used to prop up fake news websites that published claims aimed at “undermining the Ukrainian government and boosting the activities of Russian actors,” according to Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of security policy. “They would publish claims about the West betraying Ukraine and about Ukraine being a failed state,” Agranovich said. “They also claimed to be based in Kyiv, and posed as news editors, as a former aviation engineer, as the author of a scientific publication.”

The company said in a statement that its investigation into these accounts is ongoing but that it has linked the people behind the fake accounts to a previous takedown of fake accounts in 2020. Facebook security researchers at the time said the activity was traced to “individuals in Russia, the Donbass region in Ukraine and two media organizations in Crimea — NewsFront and SouthFront.”

Separately, Facebook researchers warned that a handful of Ukrainian journalists, military officials and other public figures have been targeted with hacking attempts in recent days. The activity, which Facebook is attributing to an entity known to security researchers as “Ghostwriter,” is also meant to spread disinformation. Facebook said Ghostwriter typically uses phishing attacks to take over email accounts and social media accounts in order to post disinformation while posing as public figures.

“We detected attempts to target people on Facebook, and post YouTube videos portraying Ukrainian troops as weak and surrendering to Russia, including a video claiming to show Ukrainian soldiers surrendering,” Agranovich said. Facebook isn’t speculating who is behind Ghostwriter but other researchers have linked the attacks to Belarus.

The takedowns come as Facebook has tried to contain Russia’s ability to wield disinformation on its platform. Facebook said last week that it was forming a security operations center to monitor the situation in Ukraine and help it respond quickly to threats and misinformation. The social network has also encouraged people in Ukraine to lock down their accounts, and Gleicher said Sunday that Facebook would also be enabling its “lock profile” tool in Russia as well.

At the same time, Russia has said it plans to restrict access to Facebook in the country after the company declined to remove fact checks from Russian state media outlets. Gleicher for now the company hasn’t seen signs that its services are being blocked successfully. “We do believe that we’re still accessible in the country,” he said. He also confirmed that Facebook is “fully blocking the ability of a number of Russian state media entities from broadcasting into Ukraine.”

When asked if Facebook was considering blocking Russian state media globally — following an EU ban on two prominent outlets — Gleicher didn’t rule out the possibility. “Given the situation and how quickly things are moving, we're continuing to evaluate a full range of options.”

Facebook has blocked Russian state media outlets from using its advertising platform or using other monetization features in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

The move comes after Russia regulator Roskomnadzor said it would restrict access to the social network after Facebook officials declined to stop fact checking Russian state-run media outlets on the platform. Now, Meta’s Head of Security Policy Nathaniel Gleicher says the company is stepping up its restrictions on Russian state media, which are now barred from running ads or using monetization features anywhere in the world. He added that the company continues to “to apply labels to additional Russian state media.”

It follows a similar move from Twitter, which announced on Friday that it was suspending all advertising in Ukraine and Russia in order to better highlight authoritative information and guard against misinformation. Facebook has also previously enabled a “lock profile” feature for people in Ukraine as an added security feature, and has formed a “Special Operations Center” to track how the invasion of Ukraine is unfolding on its platform.

Twitter has temporarily paused ads in Ukraine and Russia, one of several steps the company is taking to highlight safety information and minimize “risks associated with the conflict in Ukraine.”

“We’re temporarily pausing advertisements in Ukraine and Russia to ensure critical public safety information is elevated and ads don’t detract from it,” the company wrote in an update that was also shared in Ukrainian. Twitter also said it’s temporarily halting the recommendations feature that surfaces tweets from accounts users’ don’t follow in their home timelines in order to “reduce the spread of abusive content.”

Twitter didn’t indicate how long these measures would be in place, but said it was part of its ongoing work to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “We’re actively monitoring for risks associated with the conflict in Ukraine, including identifying and disrupting attempts to amplify false and misleading information,” the company said.

The company added that it’s directing users to Moments and Events curated by its editorial team in order to provide additional context about what’s happening in Ukraine. Researchers have warned that misinformation and disinformation about Ukraine will continue to flood social media platforms. 

Twitter said it’s also working to keep “high-profile accounts” safe from hacking attempts. “We’re actively monitoring vulnerable high-profile accounts, including journalists, activists, and government officials and agencies to mitigate any attempts at a targeted takeover or manipulation.” The company’s move comes one day after Facebook announced it was enabling its one-click “lock profile” tool for people in Ukraine to help users there safeguard their personal information.

Facebook’s security team is taking new steps to protect the accounts of users in Ukraine. The company is enabling its “lock profile” tool for people in the country, and building up a “Special Operations Center” to "closely monitor" what's happening in Ukraine.

The “lock profile” tool is meant to give users “one-click” access to additional privacy and security features, said Meta’sHead of Security Policy Nathaniel Gleicher. “When their profile is locked, people who aren’t their friends can’t download or share their profile photo or see posts on their timeline,” Gleicher said.

This isn’t the first time Facebook has encouraged users in “unsafe” areas to lock their profiles. Most recently, Facebook enabled the “lock profile” tool for people in Afghanistan over the summer amid the US withdrawal from the country. And the company has noted that it can be especially helpful for journalists, activists and others who may be at a higher risk of being targeted.

The social network has also formed a dedicated team to keep an eye on what’s happening in Ukraine. “In response to the unfolding military conflict in Ukraine, we have established a Special Operations Center to respond in real time,” Gleicher said. “It is staffed by experts (including native speakers) so we can closely monitor the situation and act as fast as possible.”

Reddit’s app now has another feed to endlessly scroll. The company introduced a new “Discover” section that will surface a personalized stream of photos, GIFs and videos.

The feed, the first time a new section has been added to the Reddit app in more than two years, is meant to help drive Redditors to corners of the site they might not encounter on the front page or in r/popular, according to Jason Costa, the director of product for content and communities a Reddit.

“Discover is more meant to solve the breadth problem and really help people traverse the wide corpus of Reddit,” Costa tells Engadget. He notes that early testing of the feature shows that one out of five users have joined “at least one subreddit as a result of Discover.”

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Discover also gives Reddit the chance to showcase the vast catalog of memes and GIFs and videos that are shared every day, but aren’t always front and center in the app. While much of Reddit remains a “text-based experience,” the new Discover feed could help draw in people who would rather aimlessly scroll rather than read.

The feed itself is meant to be personalized to each user much the way Instagram’s Explore section would be. New users or people who aren’t logged in will see popular content that may be trending on the service or getting a lot of engagement. While existing users will see recommendations based on subreddits they follow and the types of content they spend the most time viewing.

For now, the Discover fee is limited just to Instagram’s mobile apps, but Costa says that if Redditors like the feature it could influence more aspects of the service. “ I could absolutely see it impacting other surface areas and maybe impacting the design language of Reddit,” he said.

Mark Zuckerberg may still be explaining exactly what the metaverse is, but the Meta CEO just showed off another technology he says will be crucial to the company’s vision of creating immersive environments. Meta's AI researchers are working on a voice-powered bot that allows users to change their virtual surroundings with voice commands. 

Zuckerberg demoed an early version of the concept, called Builder Bot, at a virtual event detailing the company’s latest AI research.

“It enables you to describe a world and then it will generate aspects of that world for you,” Zuckerberg said. In his demo, he and another Meta employee used voice commands to create a very basic beach scene with a picnic table, clouds, and, yes, Zuckerberg’s signature hydrofoil. They also added some sound effects of seagulls and ocean waves.

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For now though, the technology seems to be in a relatively early stage. The environment Zuckerberg generated looked much flatter and lower-res than past metaverse demos, though his legless avatar was present much like other recent demos. “As we advance this technology further, you're going to be able to create nuanced worlds to explore and share experiences with others with just your voice,” he said.

The builder bot is part of a larger AI project called Project CAIRaoke that aims to create the kind of conversational AI necessary to create these virtual worlds. Facebook isn’t the first to experiment with this type of research. OpenAI showed off a neural network capable of generating images from text last year. But Zuckerberg said that project CAIRaoke would be central for the Meta’s future.

“In the metaverse, we're going to need AI that is built around helping people navigate virtual worlds as well as our physical world with augmented reality,” Zuckerberg said. “When we have glasses on our faces, that will be the first time that an AI system will be able to really see the world from our perspective: See what we see, hear what we hear and more.”

Zuckerberg’s comments come as he is trying to pivot the company from social networking to metaverse technology, a move that has so far proved to be incredibly expensive. But as the core Facebook service starts to lose users for the first time ever, Zuckerberg has said “metaverse” experiences like the company’s VR Horizon Worlds will drive future growth.