WARSAW, Oct 21 (Reuters) – Poland’s Digital Affairs Minister, Krzysztof Gawkowski, has delivered a blistering indictment of the world’s largest social media companies, accusing them of functioning as a “silent ally” of Russia in a “digital war” against the West. Speaking at a press conference in Warsaw, Gawkowski declared that platforms such as Discord, Google, Meta, X, Telegram, and TikTok are doing “nothing” to curb disinformation that Moscow allegedly deploys to sow division and destabilise democratic societies. The minister did not confine himself to rhetoric; he explicitly threatened financial penalties against any firm that ignores state requests to remove harmful content. Gawkowski framed the issue in stark terms, stating: “A digital war with Russia is underway, and within this digital war lies a front of disinformation. On this disinformation front, there is a silent ally to the Russian bots and the Kremlin’s GRU: social media platforms.” His words signal a new level of confrontation between the Polish government and the tech industry, and they come against a backdrop of mounting anxiety in Central and Eastern Europe about hybrid warfare.
The dispute is not new in substance, but the intensity of the accusation marks a notable escalation. Poland and other Western countries have for years accused Russia of orchestrating disinformation campaigns designed to erode public trust, inflame social tensions, and undermine support for Ukraine. Moscow has consistently denied such allegations, with Russian officials dismissing Western warnings as deliberate exaggeration for political ends. Yet the Polish government has become increasingly vocal about what it perceives as a direct threat to national security, particularly in the context of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, where Poland has served as a major logistical hub and a staunch ally of Kyiv. Gawkowski’s reference to the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, underscores the belief that these operations are not haphazard efforts by rogue actors, but are instead coordinated, state-sponsored initiatives. The minister’s analogy of a “digital war” suggests that social media platforms have become the terrain on which this conflict is fought, and that their refusal to act makes them complicit in the Kremlin’s strategy.
The evidence cited by Gawkowski is drawn from data collected by NASK, Poland’s National Research Institute, which monitors online disinformation. According to NASK, in the first half of 2026, the institute sent more than 65,000 reports of fake accounts and disinformation to the major platforms, covering everything from automated bot networks to coordinated inauthentic behaviour. The response, Gawkowski said, was alarmingly inadequate: platforms acted on fewer than a quarter of these reports. More specifically, NASK’s data revealed that just 7% of the reported cases were deleted, while slightly more than 17% were moderated in some form, leaving over 75% of the reports completely unaddressed. The figures, Gawkowski argued, point “not merely to a failure, but to deliberate action by the platforms — which profit from disinformation, use it, and treat it as a source of their revenue.” None of the named companies — Discord, Google, Meta, X, Telegram, and TikTok immediately responded to requests for comment, which may itself be telling. For critics, this silence demonstrates a pattern of indifference, if not outright avoidance, when governments raise concerns about coordinated disruption.
Gawkowski has not limited himself to diagnosing the problem; he has also laid out a specific set of demands for the platforms. Chief among these is the establishment of effective Polish-speaking content moderation teams, which would be able to understand local context and nuance rather than relying on automated systems or foreign reviewers. He further demanded that these teams maintain a direct, real-time link to the relevant Polish entities that report suspicious content, so that action can be taken swiftly. Additionally, he called for the elimination of what he termed “sham appeals processes” — mechanisms that give the appearance of due process but routinely reject valid requests for removal. He insisted that any identified bot networks be immediately removed in their entirety, not just piecemeal, and that response times for all reported cases be significantly reduced. Crucially, Gawkowski stated that any state request left unfulfilled by these platforms “will trigger proceedings to impose financial penalties upon them.” This threat of financial sanctions transforms the dispute from a diplomatic complaint into a legal and regulatory issue, with potential consequences for companies that operate in Poland and across the European Union.
The timing of Gawkowski’s remarks is significant because the European Union has recently introduced the Digital Services Act (DSA), a landmark regulation designed to hold large online platforms accountable for illegal content and systemic risks. Under the DSA, platforms can already face fines of up to 6% of their global annual turnover for non-compliance. Gawkowski’s demands for real-time linkage and immediate removal of bot networks, however, go a step further, requiring a degree of cooperation that would put Polish state authorities in a privileged position to direct platform operations. This raises questions about the balance between national security and free speech, as well as the extent to which a single member state can impose its own content moderation standards on global companies. Yet for Warsaw, the urgency of the threat appears to outweigh such concerns. The Polish government has long argued that disinformation is not merely a nuisance but a deliberate weapon aimed at undermining public trust in democratic institutions, and it has called for a more muscular response from Brussels as well as from national capitals.
In the absence of immediate responses from the major platforms, Gawkowski’s warning stands as a test of whether the tech industry will take the threat of sanctions seriously. The minister’s language, calling social media a “silent ally” of Russia, is deliberately provocative, intended to shame companies into action by aligning them with an adversary in the eyes of the public. Whether this will lead to substantive changes is uncertain; platforms have historically resisted government pressure to moderate content, citing concerns about censorship and the sheer volume of information they process. But the combination of data, legal threats, and political rhetoric may change the calculus. For Poland, which sees itself as a frontline state in the digital age, the issue is existential. As Gawkowski’s comments suggest, the battle against disinformation is not just about removing individual posts, but about whether the platforms themselves are willing to stop being vectors for a hostile power. With the threat of financial penalties hanging over them, and with the European Union’s regulatory framework tightening, the companies may soon have no choice but to respond — or to accept being branded as enablers of Russia’s digital war.