NEW RESOURCES

The Manufacturer: Real-time online sanctions tracker launched to help manufacturing businesses. “The dynamic tool is free to use and covers US, EU and UK sanctions against companies and individuals, dual-use goods, and specifically sanctioned goods. Unlike other static sanctions trackers in the market, the real-time sanctions tracker aggregates data directly from a range of global government sources, including UN, EU and UK dual-use goods lists, the UN, US and EU Consolidated Screening Lists, and US Sanctions List (OFAC), among others, before presenting the information in a dynamic, searchable database.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BBC: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s anti-Ukraine war video trends on Russian social media. “A Twitter address by Hollywood actor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the Russian people is among the top Twitter trends in Russia on Friday and has sparked reaction from various quarters.”

VOA: US Sees No Letup in Russian Influence Operations. “According to U.S. and Ukrainian officials, Moscow’s efforts to win over the world with its accounts of events in Ukraine are doing no better than Russia’s military forces inside Ukraine. More often than not, they are meeting with stiff resistance.”

CNET: Stepan the Internet-Famous Cat Escapes Ukraine, Finds Safety. “Stepan is pure vibes. He’s a 13-year-old tabby cat with more than a million followers on TikTok who relish videos of him cooly leaning against a counter with a drink, while colored lights dance on the wall, looking like his night out at the club is winding down. Stepan is also Ukrainian, which means his life and the life of his favorite human, who goes by Anna on the app, have been utterly upended since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began Feb. 24.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNN: ‘We come for our own’: How Black volunteers rallied online to help African students in Ukraine. “Black Women for Black Lives, a new coalition focused on helping Black residents escape Ukraine in the wake of the Russian invasion, amplified the students’ pleas to the international community with the hashtag #SaveSumyStudents. The group started a Change.org petition, which received thousands of supporters, calling on governments to urgently respond to the crisis. And it dispersed upwards of $55,000 dollars in donations to nearly 500 stranded students for food and necessities.”

The Verge: If you’re a Russian YouTuber, how do you get paid now?. “When Russia invaded Ukraine, Niki Proshin was already a year into making a living as a vlogger — he had a YouTube channel, a TikTok channel, and an Instagram. He also ran an online Russian club for anyone who wanted to learn the language. His website, like his videos, is in English. Instagram no longer functions in Russia. Google has stopped selling ads in Russia. It is no longer possible to subscribe to his Russian club via PayPal, which has suspended its services in Russia.”

Poynter: Broken URLs helped fuel the unfounded conspiracy theory about biolabs in Ukraine. “Some become suspicious because they say the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine removed fact sheets about the labs on its webpage. It was a technical glitch.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Verge: Russian pipeline company Transneft hit by data leak dedicated to Hillary Clinton. “As the Russian invasion of Ukraine moves into its third week, unconventional actors continue to target Russian state-backed businesses with a string of hacks and data leaks — the latest apparently referencing pro-hacktivism comments made by Hillary Clinton. The targeted organization is Transneft, the Russian state-controlled oil pipeline giant. On Thursday, leak hosting website Distributed Denial of Secrets published a link to 79GB of emails from the Omega Company, the research and development division of Transneft.”

New York Times: China’s Information Dark Age Could Be Russia’s Future. “By blocking online platforms, shutting down the last vestige of Russia’s independent media and making it a crime to refer to the fighting in Ukraine as a war, the Kremlin has made it nearly impossible for the Russian people to get independent or international news after its invasion. Most Russians are taking in an alternative reality. That’s exactly what China has been doing to its 1.4 billion people for years.”

The Register: JavaScript library updated to wipe files from Russian computers. “The developer of JavaScript library node-ipc, which is used by the popular vue.js framework, deliberately introduced a critical security vulnerability that, for some netizens, would destroy their computers’ files.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

BBC: Deepfake presidents used in Russia-Ukraine war. “A deepfake video shared on Twitter, appearing to show Russian President Vladimir Putin declaring peace, has resurfaced. Meanwhile, this week Meta and YouTube have taken down a deepfake video of Ukraine’s president talking of surrendering to Russia. As both sides use manipulated media, what do these videos reveal about the state of misinformation in the conflict?”

Fortune: Russia’s social media shutdown is expensive, costing its economy more than $860 million so far this year. “Russia’s social media shutdowns have cost the country’s economy $861 million in 2022, highlighting the steep price of its efforts to silence online dissent since the Ukraine War began. The findings, by the independent research firm Top10VPN.com, also show that the economic impact of Russia’s online censorship exceeds that of all other countries.”

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