Misinformation has run rampant on Elon Musk’s social media platform X in the 48 hours since Hamas militants’ surprise attack on Israel, with users sharing false and misleading claims about the conflict and Musk himself pointing users to an account known for spreading misinformation.
Multiple users over the weekend shared a fake White House news release falsely claiming the US was sending billions of dollars in new aid to Israel in response. Accounts on X with hundreds of thousands of followers in total quickly spread the doctored White House press release after it appeared online on Saturday.
Elsewhere on X , an account impersonating the Jerusalem Post shared a bogus report that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been hospitalized. A slew of mischaracterized videos and other posts went viral on the platform over the weekend. Community notes allow users on X to fact-check false posts on the platform. While notes were appended to both of these false posts, they often come after a false post has been viewed thousands – or in some cases millions – of times.X has relied more heavily on community notes to moderate content since Musk laid off thousands of the company’s employees, including many responsible for detecting and addressing false claims, following his takeover of the platform last year.
“In times of war, social media becomes a propaganda battlefield; there is always an element of disinformation and exaggeration,” said Emerson Brooking, senior resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “Today, X is the main platform where this online battle plays out.” Twitter has long played a pivotal role in information sharing during conflicts, from the Arab Spring to the 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine, and during previous violence in Israel and Gaza.
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