Politics and Propaganda on Social Media: How Twitter and Meta Moderate State-Linked Information Operations

Abstract

Why do Social Media Corporations (SMCs) engage in state-linked information operations? Social media can significantly influence the global political landscape, allowing governments and other political entities to engage in concerted information operations, shaping or manipulating domestic and foreign political agendas. In response to state-linked political manipulation tactics on social media, Twitter and Meta carried out take-down operations against propaganda networks, accusing them of interfering foreign elections, organizing disinformation campaigns, manipulating political debates and many other issues. This research investigates the two SMCs' policy orientation to explain which factors can affect these two companies' reaction against state-linked information operations. We find that good governance indicators such as democracy are significant elements of SMCs' country-focus. This article also examines whether Meta and Twitter's attention to political regime characteristics is influenced by international political alignments. This research illuminates recent trends in SMCs' take-down operations and illuminating interplay between geopolitics and domestic regime characteristics.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Take-down operations statistics and country interaction networks for different platforms. Countries listed by the number of take-down operations held in their country. Discrepancies for Meta (left) and Twitter (right) can be seen by comparing the ranks and the numbers of operations. Networks of interactions are also presented between countries (nodes) and operations (edges from targeting to targeted country). Domestic information operations represented wth self-loops and some of the isolated nodes corresponds to these countries. Node colors represents the out-strengths to measure activities of these countries.
• Figure 2: Positions of countries in different measures. Ranking of countries taken down by Meta (left) and Twitter (right) presented as red bars. Each row presents different state characteristics scores for years between 2018 and 2021.
• Figure 3: UNGA Voting similarities of countries to US and China. UNGA voting similarity shows negative association between United States and China. More democratic countries in V-Dem Polyarchy index have similar voting pattern to US (left) and Nato members also more likely to align with preferences of US (right).
• Figure 4: Conditional Effects of Polyarchy and Political Stability on Meta and Twitter's Country Focus
• Figure SI-1: Conditional Effects of Polyarchy and Political Stability on Meta and Twitter's Country Targeting