The Baltic states and Poland have called on four tech firms to take stronger action to curb the spread of disinformation about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
In a joint letter to the heads of Meta, Twitter, Google and YouTube, the heads of government of the four EU and NATO countries call for the proactive blocking of social media accounts that incite or justify aggressive wars and spread false information.
The official accounts of Russian and Belarusian government agencies and state-controlled media should also be taken offline.
“For many years, Russia has sowed confrontation and distrust in people's minds and manipulated reality to feed its political ambitions.
Today we are witnessing the tragic consequences of this long-tolerated trial at the cost of the lives of innocent Ukrainians," Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said on Monday.
Ukraine is now being devastated by real weapons, and attempts are being made not only to brush away the "responsibility of the warmongers, but also to justify their actions".
Together with Kaja Kallas (Estonia), Krisjanis Karins (Latvia) and Mateusz Morawiecki (Poland), Simonyte called for countermeasures.
"Online platform providers and technology companies must take a stand as authoritarian regimes seek to exploit the openness of our societies to undermine peace and democracy," the four leaders said.
The Facebook group Meta, which also owns Instagram and Whatsapp, pointed out on Sunday that false information was being spread on the online networks in order to portray Ukraine as a pawn in the hands of western countries.
The cyber security team blocked a number of fake Russia-related accounts.
"They ran websites posing as independent news outlets and created fake personalities on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Telegram and also Russia's Odnoklassniki and VK," Meta shared.
In addition, a group of hackers known as "Ghostwriters" have been trying to step up action against the military and journalists in Ukraine for a few days, the Meta security team said.
Apparently, it's about accessing Facebook accounts in order to spread false information.