I already kind of knew intuitively that this would be happening in some form, but seeing it examined like this really puts it into perspective.<p>I've noticed that on Snapchat and Instagram, I'm not able to see any new public content coming from Ukraine. On the Snapchat map, Ukraine is completely empty. I have a few Ukrainian friends, and I still see their content, but public stuff seems to be filtered or censored somehow. I'm a US-based account, and I've been in the US and Dominican Republic lately.<p>I think this phenomenon is related to filter bubbles (but also more than that). I've already been noticing for years that my connections with different political views, or different interests, are being fed completely different realities. Sometimes it's benign recommendations, other times it's creepy advertiser-driven manipulation, and this example of Ukraine/Russia shows that there is clearly some blatant, wide-scale censorship going on. The narrative is being controlled by powers operating in the shadows. It really is an unseen information war.<p>As someone who has been traveling for 10 years, my friends are incredibly diverse. So I often hear news from outside of my country and my filter bubbles. And my go-to source for trying to peek outside of the filter bubbles is Wikipedia's current events portal.<p>I've got a few Russian friends. Most are outside of Russia, but one who I regularly talk to is in Russia and stays on Instagram using a VPN. I've had some conversations with her about the war, and while she's certainly not a fan of Putin, and knows there is a war going on, she seems to be completely naive about the severity of it. When we talk about it she says things about how truth is hard to know because the media lies. She is hearing stories from the West but having a hard time knowing what is really happening.<p>There really needs to be some new form of leaflet drops to get real information to Russians despite the Information Age Iron Curtain.