Meta’s RT ban born of ‘panic’ – analysts

Blacklisting the Russian outlet isn’t going to make readers switch to mainstream media, researcher Greg Simons has predicted

Meta’s decision to ban RT from its various platforms reflects a growing “panic” in the Western world, as people no longer trust the information they receive from mainstream media outlets, analysts Greg Simons and Albert Rudatsimburwa have told RT.

The parent company of Facebook and Instagram announced on Monday that it would remove several news brands, including RT, from its applications over the coming days. Meta explained that it would take this step due to alleged “foreign interference activity” by RT, echoing accusations made by the US government last week.

Greg Simons, a Sweden-based political researcher, told RT on Wednesday that the ban is a form of projection. “If you ban something with spurious and vague accusations, then something is wrong, not with what you are accusing the other of doing, but yourself,” he said.

Meta has banned certain content based on political pressure before. In the runup to the 2020 presidential election in the US, the company censored the Hunter Biden laptop story after American spies and Democrats claimed that it was a “Russian disinformation” operation. The laptop’s contents – which implicated then-candidate Joe Biden and his family in numerous foreign influence-peddling schemes – were later proven genuine.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted last month that he was pressured by the Biden administration to remove content critical of Covid-19 vaccines and lockdowns, telling a Republican-led Congressional committee that his company “made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”

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Meta’s RT ban driven by US pressure – South African MP

Rwandan journalist Albert Rudatsimburwa told RT that the Meta ban could have something to do with the rapidly-approaching election in the US.

“They’re having elections soon in the US, and it’s like there is a panic mode that pushes them to do extreme things like that,” he said.

“People don’t trust the mainstream media, [and] they don’t trust these giants like Meta,” Simons added. “It’s clear that this is done from a position of not only panic, but of weakness. People understand this. If they cannot access RT, and I’m sure some will still manage, they will not consume mainstream media. The lie is exposed, and it’s only going to crumble more because they can’t sustain it.”

Meta has complied with an EU-wide ban on RT since 2022, which the bloc imposed unilaterally following the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict. As such, both Rudatsimburwa and Simons agreed that the latest ban is primarily aimed at the Global South, where the US has been losing influence and, according to the US State Department, losing the information war to outlets like RT.

“At this point I feel like it’s already a lost war,” Rudatsimburwa said, adding that audiences in the Global South have “enough maturity” to realize that Western governments and media outlets regularly mislead them. 

“A lot of people from the Global South and those who have an independent mind understand this,” Simons added. “And I think increasingly more will do so, because this is a crude and rude kind of interference in the free dissemination of knowledge and information.”