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A small startup in Redmond, Wash., is taking on the big task of trying to get the truth in and out of Russia as the country wages war on neighboring Ukraine — and a free press.
Targetings is a social media automation platform that helps publishers push their content across channels. Since 2015, the startup has been working with news publishers around the world, including in Russia.
Since the beginning of the war, the company has dedicated itself to helping independent media continue to report on the war and counter the propaganda pushed by the Russian government and state media. The work has become especially vital after Western news organizations such as The New York Times, CNN, ABC News and others left their Moscow bureaus as a result of the new law, which imposes up to 15 years in prison for spreading deliberately “fake” news about the military.
“We realized that we were working with the majority of those independent media that were directly affected by the bans, operating both inside and outside of Russia, but banned in Russia,” said Chris Deco, Targetings general manager for North America.
The company’s tools help Targetings partners avoid detection by creating mirror websites or posting full-text content on social networks or messaging platforms such as Telegram.
Targetings described its efforts in a LinkedIn post last week and said its technology helped spread a now-viral video around the world in which a Russian journalist staged an anti-war protest during a broadcast on state television.
“That segment, the social media coverage of that, was originally published using our platform,” Deco told GeekWire. “The media that was banned … was able to use [Targetings] to successfully distribute this content that we believe is vital.”
While Russia blocks most foreign social networks, Targetings says readers have turned to VPNs (virtual private networks) or Tor to use the internet safely and anonymously.
Val Hotemliansky, the company’s vice president of product, originally co-founded Targetings in Israel with Michael Passov. The company now employs six people.
On a call from his office east of Seattle this week, Hotemlyansky relayed the story of a partner working at a Russian media outlet who abruptly ended a recent conversation by saying Russia’s Federal Security Service was coming. Targetings has not heard from this partner since.
“We have no intention of participating in the war,” Hotemlyansky said. “We’re just a software company that developed an AI product that was good for publishers.”
But the company believes strongly in freedom of speech and freedom of the press, no matter which countries are involved in the current conflict or future ones.
“We’re going to continue this fight,” Deco said. “The good news is that technology continues to evolve so rapidly that it continues to enable new possibilities for the flow of information.”
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