Charis Papaevangelou is a PhD candidate at the University of Toulouse, France, where he is studying the political economy of social media platforms’ regulation; Nikos Smyrnaios is an Associate Professor at the University of Toulouse, France where he teaches theory, history, sociology and economics of the media and the internet. This conflict reveals the degree to which this capability makes social media platforms important stakeholders in geopolitical conflicts and information warfare, and– because of their scale and power over the public sphere– increasingly useful tools of the state.