Author: Saman Nazari, Alliance4Europe.
Note: the issue described below was addressed by X after we contacted their representatives.
As the Polish Presidential Elections approach, the international Russian influence apparatus focuses more on the country. While many of these actors are sanctioned by the EU, it is up to the social media platforms to ensure that their content does not reach European users. Usually, this is done through what’s called geofencing. Geofencing entails stopping content from reaching users in certain countries or regions. Platforms are required to do so to adhere to EU sanctions.
In our 2024 sanctions report with Science Feedback, we observed how most of the social media platforms had failed to adequately enforce these sanctions. The report outlines the regulations around these sanctions, which we won’t cover in this very short analysis.
On May 6th, the sanctioned Russian state-controlled media RT’s X channel @RT_com published two posts, promoting a video of Polish Presidential candidate Grzegorz Braun stomping on and burning an EU flag. The first tweet was accessible in the EU instantly when clicking on their link (1), while the second became accessible after refreshing the page a few times (2).
Images 1 and 2: RT tweets promoting Braun visible to EU audiences
On May 7th, 8 other tweets from the @RT_com channel were tested to see if the geo-fencing mechanism of X is working.
One of these tweets resolved instantly, showing the content of the tweets (3), while the rest of the sample needed to be refreshed a few times before they became visible (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10). This issue makes it possible for users to access the sanctioned state-controlled media channel RT through direct links to content.
After waiting an hour and repeating the same test, the same tweet did not instantly resolve anymore, but other tweets in the test set did. Therefore, it is likely that the bug is not tied to a specific piece of content.
The issue was tested by another researcher in another EU country.
The same issue does not materialise when we try to open @RT_com’s profile, only showing the expected “Account Withheld” text.
Image 3: Accessing @RT_Com from the EU. Expected behaviour.
While the content itself is accessible, the profile picture of the page is still blacked out, as seen in Image 4.
Image 4: Tweet with blacked-out Profile picture.
The same issue was also recreated on two different phones.
Image 5: Showing the same issue on a phone browser.
Lastly, to verify that this is not an issue purely tied to RT @RT_com, a post on the French-language RT page, which is also not accessible in the EU, was also tested. The same issue was also identified on @RTenfrancais.
Image 6: Tweet from X (11).
The issue has been flagged to X on the 7th of May 2025. X replied on the 8th of May and has now addressed the issue.