Facebook, Twitter Release a Feature to Lock Accounts and Share Security Tips for Users in the Wake of the Ukraine-Russia Conflict
Meta Platforms, the company that owns Facebook, has established a special operations center to monitor the conflict in Ukraine, and it has launched a feature that allows users in the country to lock their social media profiles for security, a company official said in a series of tweets on Thursday.
Twitter posted tips on Wednesday about how users can protect their accounts from hacking, make their tweets private, and deactivate their accounts. The company distributed the safety tips via Twitter in English, Russian, and Ukrainian.
During times of crisis, both social media platforms are frequently used by political activists and researchers to disseminate information. The Russian invasion of Ukraine on Thursday raised concerns about the spread of conflict misinformation on social media.
Users in Ukraine can lock their profile with a single click to prevent users who are not their friends from downloading or sharing their profile picture or seeing posts on their timeline, according to Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, on Twitter.
Twitter also shared information on Wednesday about how users can deactivate their accounts.
As the conflict in Ukraine deteriorated on Thursday, social media users took to platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitter to share videos of evacuation lines, helicopters in the sky, and anti-war protests in Russia.
The hashtags “Russia” and “Ukraine” received 37.2 billion and 8.5 billion views, respectively, on the short-form video app TikTok.
