How the international media covered the Russian-Ukrainian war, April 6

Meta is planning to introduce a new tool for itʼs messengers following a report on human rights impacts of end-to-end encription, the Wired writes. Business for Social Responsibility, a nonprofit that spent two years to complete the study. found that end-to-end encryption is overwhelmingly positive and crucial for protecting human rights, but it also delved into the criminal activity and violent extremism that can find safe haven on end-to-end encrypted platforms. While the company is working on recommendations helping to reduce negative impact, Meta has already rolled out end-to-end encryption for Instagram Direct Messaging in Ukraine and Russia in response to Russiaʼs invasion of Ukraine in the beginning of March.

NPR writes about how forced need to reduce oil and gas consumption might help US and EU achieve the carbon-reduce goals and help respond to the global warming. At the same time, US is planning to issue additional 15 billion cubic meters of liquified natural gas to the European Union, and the ifrastructure to transport and maintain it would lock in more carbon emissions for years to come. Therefore, while the plan to shift to renewable sources of energy is still on, right now the EU will need oil and gas to reserve time and get on track with their climate goals.

An article on Forbes explores to which extent international law can help Ukraine in the war against Russia. In short, even though there are few mechanisms for actually bringing war criminals to justice, there are other ways how such mechanisms can be useful. Firstly, those who comply with international law have more righteous and honorable positions. Secondly, filing suit with the International Court of Justice aims to get an objective rationale for justifying the financial and military support of third-party countries.

The Atlantic published an opinion column by Carl Miller, director of the Center for the Analysis of Social Media at the Demos, a London-based think tank. Carl and his colleagues have been looking into which kinds of Twitter profiles have been sharing pro-Russian hashtags (such as #Istandwithputin or #Istandwithrussia) in their tweets. At first, the researchers saw early signs of deliberate effort standing behind these hashtags trending. Following a message-based community detection tool, Carlʼs team found several core clusters of accounts clearly tied to their locations. The clusters included: a knot of Indian, Pakistani and Iranian accounts, a node of accounts identifying as South African plus Ghanaian, Nigerian, and Kenyan, and a cluster included accounts created on the day of a full-scale invasion, or on March 2 – the day of a key United Nations vote condemning the invasion. While being cautious, Carl thinks there are signs of “paid to engage” networks used to spread the message, however, the real people help the hashtags trend as well. The most important conclusion is that while the West is looking in the western media sphere, the information war mught be happening elsewhere beyond the west, and it is dangerous to ignore it.

Irena Qarpa, a Ukrainian author now residing in Paris published an essay on Vanity Fair. Irena writes about her experience dealing with pro-Kremlin, or better say, anti-Ukrainian disinformation in Europe. As a public figure, Ms. Qarpa is now a regular Ukrainian face on French TV, where she is put together with pro-Russian propagandists, like advisors to Marine Le Pen. Unfortunately, Russian factory of parallel unvirse continues working, leading to regular people like a hotel owner described by Irena, who reacted on her telling stories of raped women and starving cities with a “These things happen at war” response.