Poland accused social media of aiding Russian propaganda and threatened fines

Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs, Krzysztof Gawkowski, said in an official statement that major global social media platforms were “silent allies” of the Russian Federation in the hybrid disinformation war being waged against the West. Source: Reuters

The official issued a direct threat to impose tough financial sanctions and multimillion-dollar fines on tech giants if they continue to stonewall government requests to block pro-Kremlin bot farms, fabricated content, and fake accounts aimed at destabilizing the situation in Europe.

Warsaw’s sharp ultimatum was prompted by disappointing findings in a report by Poland’s National Research Institute NASK for the first half of 2026. According to the study, the administrators of the largest social media platforms (including Meta and X) responded to and took action on fewer than 25% of more than 65,000 complaints officially submitted by Poland about fake accounts and hybrid disinformation campaigns. Social media companies removed just 7% of the identified sources of disinformation and moderated only 17% of problematic content. Gawkowski directly accused platform executives of deliberately ignoring hybrid threats to preserve revenue from views of destructive content.

Warsaw has made tough demands of IT platform owners: establish full-fledged teams of Polish-speaking moderators with a direct line of communication to Polish intelligence services, eliminate formal bureaucratic appeals procedures, sharply reduce response times to disinformation campaigns, and immediately dismantle identified bot networks. The minister emphasized that, from now on, any ignored official government request will constitute legal grounds for initiating court proceedings and imposing hefty fines.

Poland’s position was supported by its NATO partners: Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius, speaking in the context of protecting elections, called for support for Ukraine’s strikes on Russian data centers, which, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have already proved effective, significantly reducing the number of Kremlin bots online.

Recall that earlier, Poland updated its national security strategy in light of Russian aggression.