  The spread of propaganda, misinformation, and biased narratives from
autocratic regimes, especially on social media, is a growing concern in many
democracies. Can censorship be an effective tool to curb the spread of such
slanted narratives? In this paper, we study the European Union's ban on Russian
state-led news outlets after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. We analyze
775,616 tweets from 133,276 users on Twitter/X, employing a
difference-in-differences strategy. We show that the ban reduced pro-Russian
slant among users who had previously directly interacted with banned outlets.
The impact is most pronounced among users with the highest pre-ban slant
levels. However, this effect was short-lived, with slant returning to its
pre-ban levels within two weeks post-enforcement. Additionally, we find a
detectable albeit less pronounced indirect effect on users who had not directly
interacted with the outlets before the ban. We provide evidence that other
suppliers of propaganda may have actively sought to mitigate the ban's
influence by intensifying their activity, effectively counteracting the
persistence and reach of the ban.
