ZhangShenqing
commented
3 weeks ago Interesting topic.
However, I find it hard to believe that most of the infrastructure needed for the internet was destroyed due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Why? The reason is that striking down a whole country’s internet infrastructure either takes an enormous amount of bombs (which is something the Russian Aerospace Forces don’t have) or an EMP that is powerful enough to cause a nationwide blackout (which is something only nuclear weapons can do). And we can easily name a few contradictions to these two guesses. For example, we still see people like President Zelensky uploading their daily stories from Ukraine on a variety of platforms including Snapchat.
But why are we not seeing Ukraine on the 24H World Story Map? A little digging around seems to be needed. My first instinct is that it is a cooperative move on Snapchat's end, helping Ukraine's government to maintain information control.
We can easily get some evidence on the internet. For example, as per the news report from The Verge, major platforms like Snapchat have disabled tracking for data like this in Ukraine in order to prevent Russia from taking advantage of it during the invasion.
Why is this seemingly harmless data so important? You might ask.
To answer that, we need to first bring up a concept: "Open-Source Intelligence" (OSINT). In fact, these seemingly insignificant social media data points are actually valuable resources for battlefield intelligence analysis. Through OSINT techniques, military forces or intelligence agencies can gather and analyze information from public sources, such as geolocation data from social media, photos or videos posted by users, and more. This information can help map out troop movements, logistics routes, and even the overall battlefield situation in a specific area.
Returning to the situation in Ukraine, if platforms like Snapchat continued to openly share such real-time data, Russian forces could potentially use this information to conduct more precise strikes. Therefore, disabling the public display of this data is not only a crucial step in protecting Ukrainian citizens' privacy but also a strategy to reduce the chances of intelligence being exploited by the enemy.
weifanz
Weifan Zhou's Personal Blog
https://weifanz.github.io/posts/2024/08/21/see-how-wars-going-on-from-snapchat-24h-world-story-map/