X criticised for enabling spread of Israel-Hamas disinformation
X criticised for enabling spread of Israel-Hamas disinformation
Elon Musk endorsed users who have posted ‘wrong and unverifiable things’ while paid-for accounts spread fake news
X’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict has come under scrutiny after a “deluge” of fake posts and Elon Musk’s recommendation of war coverage from accounts that have made false claims or antisemitic comments.
The owner of X, formerly Twitter, recommended two accounts on Sunday. He wrote: “For following the war in real-time, @WarMonitors and @sentdefender are good. It is also worth following direct sources on the ground. Please add interesting options in the replies below.”
The @WarMonitors account told a user in June “go worship a jew lil bro” while both accounts helped to spread a false claim in May that an explosion had occurred at the Pentagon. Emerson T Brooking, a researcher at the Atlantic Council’s digital forensic research lab, said the @sentdefender account regularly posted “wrong and unverifiable things”.
Musk has since deleted his post and disputed a War Monitor post describing Gaza fighters as “martyrs”. He wrote: “While reporting both sides is fair, please use maximally accurate words or I must withdraw my recommendation to follow your account.”
Fake social media accounts are spreading false information about the Israel-Hamas conflict, with X and TikTok among the affected platforms, according to disinformation specialists.
Or, you know, you could stop using Twitter?
I'm not surprised that Elon is suggesting people get their information from accounts known to peddle bullshit.
There's a sliver of me that hopes he'll eventually clue the fuck in that he's in the wrong if he keeps having to delete tweets supporting such terrible people.
Honestly it should have happened already, but maybe it's still possible.
Twitter is now just a tool used by terrorists.
...You ever wonder if Musk inadvertently benefited from being backed into buying Twitter, merely by virtue of much of the media's addiction to Twitter leading to their incessant reporting on it and his BS on there?
It's like Trump all over again, rather than any particular skill at media manipulation, a lot of the media can't help but report on these assholes because of a mix of the clicks/views they draw, and their own weird social media addictions.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
X’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict has come under scrutiny after a “deluge” of fake posts and Elon Musk’s recommendation of war coverage from accounts that have made false claims or antisemitic comments.
He wrote: “While reporting both sides is fair, please use maximally accurate words or I must withdraw my recommendation to follow your account.”
Fake social media accounts are spreading false information about the Israel-Hamas conflict, with X and TikTok among the affected platforms, according to disinformation specialists.
One in five social media accounts participating in online conversations about the Hamas attacks and their aftermath are fake, according to Cyabra, an Israeli analysis firm.
Cyabra, which has monitored US election disinformation and tracked bot accounts on Twitter historically, found that approximately 30,000 fake accounts have been spreading pro-Hamas disinformation or gathering sensitive details about their targets.
He said X’s crowd-sourced factchecking function, community notes, could not cope with the number of false posts.
The original article contains 457 words, the summary contains 155 words. Saved 66%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Why are we still upvoting more Musk bullshit. Downvote this to oblivion.
