False claims on Israel-Hamas war mushroom online, put focus on Musk’s X -October 10, 2023 at 05:36 pm EDT
Oct 10 (Reuters) – The rapid spread of misleading claims
and doctored images in the aftermath of a deadly rampage by
Hamas gunmen in Israel has put the focus on Elon Musk’s X
platform, which has drawn the ire of the European Union.
Part of the challenge for those combating fake
information online is that changes made by Musk earlier this
year have made it more difficult to track the full scale of
deception on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, social media
researchers told Reuters.
Researchers studying the origins and proliferation of
misinformation said they have lost the ability to automatically
track keywords, hashtags and other information about real-time
events, as X eliminated access to a data tool that was free to
academics before Musk’s acquisition of the platform in October
last year.
Without the tool, researchers now need to manually analyze
thousands of links, said Ruslan Trad, a resident fellow at the
Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab).
Asked for comment, an X representative said more than
500 unique Community Notes, a feature that lets users add
context to potentially misleading content, have been posted
about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In a post on the social media platform on Monday, X said it
removed newly created accounts affiliated with the Islamist
group Hamas and had “actioned tens of thousands of posts for
sharing graphic media, violent speech, and hateful conduct.” X
did not disclose the actions it took on the posts, which can be
removed or have their distribution reduced by the company.
One false claim that spread on X and Meta Platform’s
Facebook showed a U.S. government document edited to
look like approval for $8 billion in military funds to Israel,
according to a report by the Reuters Fact Check team.
A Meta spokesperson said a team of experts including Hebrew
and Arabic speakers were monitoring the “rapidly evolving
situation in real-time.”
Others include a falsely labeled video purporting to be
Hamas militants with a kidnapped child, and video from a concert
by American singer Bruno Mars miscaptioned as footage from an
Israeli music festival that was attacked by Hamas, according to
Reuters Fact Check.
In a
surprise attack
on Saturday, Hamas gunmen rampaged through towns, taking
captives and killing hundreds of people in the
deadliest Palestinian militant attack
in Israel’s history.
REGULATORY SCRUTINY
While disinformation has spread on all major social media
platforms including Facebook and TikTok, X appeared to be the
most recent to draw scrutiny from regulators.
On Tuesday, European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton
warned Musk that X was spreading “illegal content and
disinformation,” according to a letter Breton posted on X. The
EU is home to some of the strictest internet laws in the world
which require platforms to fight fake content.
Musk challenged Breton’s post and responded “Please list the
violations you allude to on X, so that the public can see them.”
Under Musk, X has allowed users to pay to verify their
accounts and lets certain users earn a portion of ad sales under
a revenue share program. The changes now offer paid accounts the
incentive to spread provocative or false claims to rack up
followers, said Renee DiResta, a research manager at Stanford
Internet Observatory.
“Some of these accounts (on X) appeared to have been set up
recently to gain virality … and spread popular misinformation
about the war,” said Jack Brewster, enterprise editor at
Newsguard, which creates reliability ratings for news websites.
Musk himself recommended that X users follow two accounts
that had previously spread false claims for “real-time” updates
on the conflict, the Washington Post reported. The billionaire
owner of the platform posted the recommendation on Sunday and
later deleted the post, according to the Washington Post.
Misinformation appeared to be most prevalent on X, according
to Brewster and Tamara Kharroub, deputy executive director at
Arab Center Washington DC, a nonpartisan research center.
False information has also spread on messaging app Telegram
and short-form video app TikTok, said DFRLab’s Trad.
A Telegram spokesperson said the company does not have the
“power to verify information.” TikTok did not respond to request
for comment.
Social media platforms face the challenge of straddling a
line between moderating content to protect users while allowing
information to spread in real time, something that has also
helped the news media and investigators track civilian deaths.
Towing the line is difficult even when platforms plan months
in advance for planned events like elections, said Solomon
Messing, a professor at New York University’s Center for Social
Media and Politics who previously worked at Twitter and
Facebook.
“It’s much more difficult when there’s a surprise terrorist
attack, particularly one with this much video footage,” said
Messing.
Some Community Notes on X have appeared after misleading
narratives were viewed by thousands of users, Kharroub said,
making them less effective at correcting false information.
X said in its post on Monday that Community Notes typically
appear within minutes of content posting. The company said while
it may be “incredibly difficult” to see certain content, it was
in the public interest to see information in real time.
A YouTube spokesperson said some violent or
graphic content may be allowed if it provides sufficient news or
documentary value about the conflict, adding the company
prohibits content that promotes violent organizations, including
video filmed by Hamas. Like other online platforms, YouTube has
moderation employees and technology to remove content that
violates its rules.
Snap, owner of messaging app Snapchat, said its map
feature, which lets users view public posts from anywhere in the
world, will remain available in the region with teams monitoring
for misinformation and content that incites violence.
(Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas and Riniki Sanyal in
Bangalore, editing by Deepa Babington)
