Home Democrats urge social media platforms to preserve likely evidence of war crimes in Ukraine
Prime Home Democrats wrote letters to the chief executives of four big social media platforms on Wednesday, urging them to preserve and archive written content related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that could be possible proof of war crimes.
The lawmakers questioned Meta, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok to protect and archive posts connected to the conflict “that may perhaps present proof of war crimes or human rights violations,” create a system with human rights-certain companies to share that material and develop a way for content depicting a attainable war crime to be flagged by the platforms’ end users.
“Often, pictures and videos of these despicable functions and their aftermath have been recorded and shared on social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram,” the lawmakers wrote in one particular letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“If verified as authentic, this articles could provide the U.S. authorities and worldwide human rights investigators with a trove of proof that would support to substantiate allegations of war crimes and other atrocities fully commited by Russian forces from the folks of Ukraine.”
The major Property Democrats underscored the worth of their request by noting that artificial intelligence-enabled and automatic methods, and other usually means utilized by social media platforms to acquire down graphic posts, may perhaps be eliminating articles from their platforms that could be used as achievable evidence of human rights violations.
“We are worried that social media platforms, like Fb and Instagram, do not have suitable methods in location to archive this content material so that it can be built offered to global companies conducting investigations into allegations of war crimes and other atrocities,” they wrote to Zuckerberg.
“Without correct archival strategies and mechanisms in area, the removing of this material implies ‘valuable evidence … can be effectively dropped for good,’ more hindering the skill of investigators to obtain, look at, and verify evidence of human rights violations and war crimes,” they added.
The letters were signed by Household Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), Home International Affairs Committee Chair Gregory W. Meeks (D-N.Y.) and Reps. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) and Bill Keating (D-Mass.)
The progress comes immediately after Legal professional Typical Merrick Garland confirmed previous thirty day period that the United States was helping Ukraine in amassing and preserving evidence of doable war crimes.
The Hill has achieved out to Meta, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok for comment.
