This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on February 28th, 2022.

The American tech giants want to limit the Russian regime’s message to the outside world. But the success of those propaganda channels has earned the platforms many millions over the years.

A site where you can put up a profile picture, share information about yourself and talk to friends. All of it on a white background with blue accents. News and links shared in a news feed in the middle of the page, and “stories” sitting in round bubbles at the top. Sound familiar?

The site in question is called VK, also known as Vkontakte, and it’s Russia’s largest social network. Ever since its launch in 2006 it has been a Russian copy of Facebook. Its success has been enormous and made VK a power in the country. That’s why it wasn’t particularly surprising when a majority of the company was bought up by state-controlled gas giant Gazprom in late 2021. With over 400 million posts a month, VK has the ability to steer the conversation and the agenda in the country. The company’s CEO, Vladimir Kiriyenko, is one of the individuals around President Vladimir Putin, and one of those hit by sanctions since the war started.

Over the weekend, the prime ministers of neighboring countries Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland wrote a letter to the CEOs of Twitter, YouTube and Meta (previously Facebook) asking them to suspend certain accounts and limit the spread of what they consider to be disinformation. The American tech giants are now saying they’re limiting the reach and monetization of Russian state media. But because of VK’s popularity, the effect inside Russia is absent. Pausing ads in Russia and Ukraine, the way Twitter is doing, is essentially a swing at nothing.

The issue has come up for the tech giants several times before — and has generated considerable controversy. Nick Clegg, Meta’s policy chief, said this week that Russia has limited Russians’ access to the company’s services because it hasn’t accepted the fact-checking done on some material. YouTube was threatened with being shut down entirely from the country unless it welcomed back two channels that had been suspended for disinformation about covid vaccines.

Using social media to spread its view of the news has been a Russian practice for a long time. The most important of all the channels is YouTube, which was one of the players that over the weekend said it had removed the ability for Russian media to earn money from ads. How effective this will be is debated, as several channels linked to the Russian state continued to be found with ads shortly after.

The biggest of the state-controlled channels on YouTube is RT, previously known as Russia Today. RT, which also exists as a regular TV channel, has invested heavily over many years and built a network of channels with tens of millions of subscribers. Broadcasts are in several languages, including English, Russian, German and Spanish. As early as 2017, American intelligence agencies described RT as the most important propaganda channel for the Kremlin. During the 2016 US presidential election, the channel consistently spread negative news about Hillary Clinton and suggested, for example, that she was in poor health.

When YouTube now limits RT’s ability to make money from its broadcasts, it’s done with full knowledge of its size and influence over many years. French AI expert Guillaume Chaslot claims the company has recommended RT’s channels over 100 billion times through its own algorithms. It is, in other words, YouTube itself that to a large extent created RT’s success on the platform in the first place — and made a lot of money doing so. That they’ve been accused of spreading propaganda has been well known — and accepted — for years.

When individual actors use social media platforms successfully, it creates a complexity for the companies behind them. The restrictions so far are therefore relatively mild. All have chosen not to remove content from their channels.

But removing content the Russian state doesn’t like — that they’ve done before. Last autumn, both Apple and Google removed an app made by supporters of Russian opposition politician Aleksej Navalnyj. So there are more methods in the tech giants’ arsenal — depending on who’s asking.