Four U.S. representatives signed letters to the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter urging them to archive any content uploaded to their platforms that could be used as evidence of Russian war crimes.
As TikTok booms in popularity and surpasses 1 billion users, the rise of short-form video has offered unprecedented access to live footage from war zones, not to mention that Meta, YouTube and Twitter continue to capture our attention, too. The members of congress think that social media uploads can be used to prosecute people.
Graphic wartime videos are often removed from social platforms since they can violate terms of service that prohibit violent content. According to a Human Rights Watch report, it is not clear what will happen to the videos once they are removed from the public-facing apps. Facebook says it keeps deleted data for at least 90 days, but it sometimes keeps it for longer when requested by law enforcement.
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.
Four representatives are calling on these platforms to archive potentially useful content for an extended period of time, to coordinate with international human rights organizations to develop a legal, established way to share such content, and to increase transparency around artificial intelligence-based moderation systems.
According to the HRW report, photos, videos and other content posted on social media have increasingly supported accountability processes, including judicial proceedings, for serious international crimes. There have been at least 10 cases in Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden where people involved in war crimes in Iraq and Syria have been punished using evidence from social media posts.
These bodies will have to be careful not to fall into the trap of misinformation, which may be used to facilitate a wrongful conviction. There have been many instances of fake videos going viral on social media, like video game footage that was filmed on the ground in Ukraine, since Russia invaded the country.
Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter have been reached out to by TechCrunch. We will update this post if there is a response.
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