Hundreds of videos produced by the Russian-controlled publication RT hit YouTube last year, despite the platform’s ban on such media last year.
Google-owned YouTube banned all Russian state-funded media from its platform globally in March 2022, citing a policy that prohibits content that “denies, minimizes, or trivializes well-documented violent events,” as Russia sought guide the narrative in his war in the Ukraine.
but a report posted on Wednesday by Newsguard, a US-based disinformation watchdog, found 250 uploads of 50 RT-created videos about the war in Ukraine across more than 100 YouTube channels since the ban. The content had reached over half a million combined views according to the study, and contains debunked claims about the Ukraine regime and its actions in the war, including that the country had installed Nazi leadership and committed war crimes against its own citizens.
“These key narratives in the Russian disinformation campaign seek to undermine Ukraine’s credibility and demonize Ukraine,” said Madeline Roache, an author of the study. “They come as part of a larger attempt to erode support for the country internationally.”
In many cases, the RT logo was removed from videos that also appeared in full on RT’s website, suggesting that the outlet was deliberately hiding the origins of its content to circumvent YouTube’s rules.
The platform’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, has been outspoken about such tactics, claiming in April 2022 that it can upload unbranded videos that stay online for several days before being detected.
“Without using our brand, we open a channel on YouTube, it gets millions of views in a few days”, Simonyan told state media in April 2022. “After three days [YouTube’s] the intelligence services find out… and close it down”.
RT did not respond to a request for comment on whether it was behind the accounts cited in the study. In a statement to Newsguard, YouTube did not dispute the findings, but said its teams have removed more than 9,000 channels and more than 85,000 war-related videos since the conflict began.
A spokesperson added that in connection with the ban on Russian state-funded news channels, more than 800 channels have been removed and 4 million videos have been blocked.
“Our teams continue to closely monitor the ongoing war and stand ready to take further action,” the spokesperson said. As of February 21, YouTube had removed 81 of the 250 uploads identified in the NewsGuard study. He did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.
A monetized channel identified by the studio to share content created by RT it is run by a British citizen living in Russia named Mike Jones. The pro-Russia gamer-turned-influencer has earned more than 117,000 followers by sharing a variety of pro-Putin propaganda, conspiracy theories and misinformation.
In a video, he claims that the March 2022 airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol was staged. Although that video and others violate YouTube’s policy that prohibits content that denies, minimizes, or trivializes well-documented violent events, as of this writing he remains on the channel generating ad revenue.
In response to the study, YouTube removed 17 videos from RT content, including one from Jones’s channel, but did not respond to a request for comment on why the account remains online and continues to run ads.
The study also found RT content hosted on at least five channels that appear to be directly run by the Russian government, including one from the Russian news agency Rossotrudnichestvo, which the EU sanctioned in July 2022 for spreading what it described as “Kremlin narratives, that include historical revisionism”.
The researchers say they were shocked by the sheer amount of disinformation produced by RT despite global efforts to stop the propaganda machine. The outlet made 50 documentaries last year, or about one a week.
“This is a huge investment and a lot of work to produce these movies,” said Eva Maitland, co-author of the study.. “They are moving beyond short news clips. It shows the value they place in exposing their disinformation narratives.”
Most of the documentaries were in English and Russian, but the researchers said they are seeing a growing number of films released in French, German and Italian. despite the sanctions against RT collected by the EU.
“It shows that these sanctions have not deterred the amount that is being produced, reinforcing again the importance of this content in your information operations during the war,” Roache said.
