How the Kremlin Finds Ways to Spread Its Messages

Major American social media companies sometimes describe the task of identifying disinformation or other malevolent material pushed online by state actors as an endless game of cat and mouse.This week several of them made a significant play in that game by booting RT and its related Russian state-owned media network off their platforms, a move that in the short term will sharply reduce the network’s audience numbers, media analysts said.But the Kremlin, when thwarted in the past, has quickly devised new ways to get its message out, they noted, and RT can move to other outlets for distribution.Take what happened just two years ago, when Canada and the European Union banned RT outright.

Viewership in different countries for channels like RT Deutsch and RT France immediately cratered, but within days new pages appeared that exactly mirrored RT under different, unrelated names that were not blocked and popped up in internet search results, experts noted.“This does not collapse their audience,” said Mr.Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, referring to the new ban.

He coauthored a report examining the continued spread of RT content after the earlier ban, which was prompted by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.“If you are a really hardcore RT follower, you’ll find a way to access it,” he said, “What this really hurts is their ability to span platforms, to reach new audiences, to get in front of people who are not actively seeking out RT.”During the last decade, the Kremlin moved to strangle all independent domestic media, driving much of it out of the country.

But it also worked to create a state-run international broadcast network to end what President Vladimir V.Putin called a Western “monopoly” on information globally.

RT is the central pillar of that network.The online pages of RT and other, related outlets like Sputnik built a worldwide audience on Facebook of more than 88 million followers, according to data released on...