Elon Musk’s X Sparks Outrage as Misinformation About Israel-Gaza War Spreads on Social Media

The Israel-Hamas war has highlighted the transformation of Twitter into X, which is no longer just an unreliable source but actively promotes falsehoods, despite its previous role as the go-to platform for staying updated on global events.

Experts say that under Elon Musk, the platform has weakened to the point where it has not only failed to curb misinformation, but favors posts from accounts that pay for its blue-check subscription service, regardless of who runs them.

If such posts go viral, their blue-checked creators may be eligible for payments from X, creating a financial incentive to post whatever gets the most reaction—including misinformation.

Ian Bremmer, a well-known foreign policy expert, posted on X that the level of “algorithmically promoted” Israel-Hamas war disinformation on the platform is unlike anything I’ve ever come across in my career as a political scientist. “

And the European Union’s digital enforcer wrote to Musk about misinformation and “potentially illegal content” on X, one of the first major tests of the 27-nation bloc’s new digital rules aimed at cleaning up social media platforms.

While Musk’s social media site is full of chaos, competitors like TikTok, YouTube and Facebook are also coping with the conflict with a flood of unsubstantiated rumors and lies, playing the usual hoax that occurs whenever a news event draws attention. the world’s attention.

“People are desperate for information, and the context of social media can actively disrupt people’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction,” said Gordon Pennycook, an assistant professor of psychology at Cornell University who studies misinformation.

For example, instead of asking if something is true, people may focus on whether something is surprising, interesting, or even likely to make them angry—those types of posts are more likely to elicit strong reactions and go viral.

Liberal advocacy group Media Matters found that subscribers to X’s premium service have shared at least six misleading videos about the war since Saturday. This included out-of-context videos and old ones that were claimed to be fresh – which garnered millions of views.

TikTok, on the other hand, is “almost as bad” as X, said researcher Kolina Koltai of research collective Bellingcat. He previously worked for Twitter at Community Notes, its crowdsourced fact-checking service.

But unlike X, TikTok has never been known as the No. 1 source for real-time information on current events.

“I think everyone knows to take TikTok with a grain of salt,” Koltai said. But with X, “you see people actively benefiting from misinformation because they have incentives to spread viral content — and misinformation tends to spread viruses. .”

At the same time, emerging platforms are still finding their footing in the global information ecosystem, so while they may not yet be subject to widespread disinformation campaigns, they also lack the influence of larger, more established competitors.

For example, Facebook and Instagram owner Meta’s Threads is gaining traction among users fleeing X, but the company has so far tried to downplay news and politics in favor of “friendlier” topics.

Meta, TikTok and X did not immediately respond to The Associated Press’ requests for comment.

Late Monday, a message from X’s security team said: “Over the past couple of days, @X has seen an increase in daily active users in the conflict zone, with over 50 million posts worldwide focusing on the events of the weekend. Hamas terror attack on Israel. As events unfold rapidly, the inter-company management team has assessed this moment as a crisis that requires the highest level of response.

While plenty of actual pictures and accounts of the massacre have emerged, they have been mixed with social media users making false claims and showing false videos of other incidents.

Among the pieces are false claims of an Israeli commander-in-chief being kidnapped, a White House memo purporting to show US President Joe Biden announcing billions in aid to Israel, and old unrelated videos of Russian President Vladimir Putin with inaccurate English subtitles. Even a clip from a video game was broadcast as a video of the conflict.

“Every time there’s a big event and the information is top notch, we see misinformation spread like wildfire,” Pennycook said. “Now there’s a very consistent pattern, but every time it happens there’s a sudden concern about misinformation that tends to dissipate after a while.”

“We need tools to help build resistance to misinformation before events like this happen,” he said.

For now, those looking for a central hub to find reliable, real-time information online may be out of luck. While Twitter was imperfect, there is no clear substitute for it. This means that anyone looking for accurate information online needs to be vigilant.

In times of big news, such as the current conflict, Koltai recommended “going to your traditional name brands and news outlets like AP, Reuters that do things like fact-checking” and active reporting on the ground.

Meanwhile, in Europe, major social media platforms are facing tighter scrutiny over the war.

Britain’s technology minister, Michelle Donelan, summoned the bosses of UK X, TikTok, Snapchat, Google and Meta to a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the “proliferation of anti-Semitism and extremely violent content” following the Hamas attack.

He insisted that they outline their actions to quickly remove content that violates the UK’s online security law or terms of service.

In his letter to Musk, European Commission member Thierry Breton warned of sanctions for non-compliance with the EU’s new digital services law. The law puts major online platforms like X under further scrutiny, requiring them to make it easier for users to report illegal content and take steps to reduce disinformation — or face fines of up to 6% of annual global revenue.

Musk responded by citing the platform’s approach using crowdsourced fact-checking annotations, an apparent reference to community notes.

“Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports,” Musk wrote in X. “List the violations you refer to in X so the public can see them.”

Breton responded that Musk is “well aware” of reports of “fake content and glorification of violence.”

“Your job is to show that you talk the talk,” he said.

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Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.