Congress asks social media companies to archive evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine

On Thursday, TechCrunch reported that Congress is asking major social media platforms to archive content showing evidence of Russian war crimes in the invasion of Ukraine.

Four representatives sent letters making the request to Meta (the parent company of Facebook), Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok.

"As TikTok booms in popularity and surpasses 1 billion users, the rise of short-form video has offered unprecedented access to live footage from war zones — not to mention that Meta, YouTube and Twitter continue to capture our attention, too," reported Amanda Silberling. "These members of congress — Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Stephen Lynch (D-MA) and William Keating (D-MA) — think that social media uploads can be instrumental in holding the perpetrators of human rights violations accountable."

"In particular, the four representatives are calling on these platforms to preserve and archive potentially useful content for an extended period of time; coordinate with international human rights organizations to develop a legal, established way to share such content; increase transparency around AI-based content moderation systems and how they interface with war content; and, creating a way for users to flag content that they think might contain evidence of war crimes," said the report.

The Russian army has been accused of repeated war crimes as part of the Ukraine invasion, from the bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol to the butchering of unarmed civilians in Bucha.

Russia has denied all accusations, claiming that they are only going after military targets and sticking to their discredited story they are trying to "denazify" the country.