In exercising discretion over how unverified or false content is moderated, social media companies have decided to “pick a side,” according to Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and a former head of security at Facebook.“I think this demonstrates the limits of ‘fact-checking’ in a fast-moving battle with real lives at stake,” Mr. Stamos said. He added that technology platforms never created rules against misinformation overall, instead targeting specific behaviors, actors and content.That leaves the truth behind some wartime narratives, like an apparent assassination plot against Mr. Zelensky or simply the number of troops killed in battle, fairly elusive, even as official accounts and news media share the information.Those narratives have continued as the war marches on, revealing the contours of an information war aimed not just at Western audiences but also Russian citizens. At the United Nations on Monday, the Ukrainian ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, shared a series of text messages that he said were retrieved …
