Social media platforms are struggling to contain a tsunami of misinformation surrounding Palestinian-Israeli hostilities after relaxing content moderation policies.
While major world events often trigger an avalanche of misinformation, researchers say the scale and speed with which it proliferated following the weekend attack on Israel by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has never been seen before.
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The war offers a grim case study of the inability of platforms like Meta-owned Facebook and X, formerly Twitter, to combat false information in a climate of layoffs and cost cuts that have destroyed trusted teams and security.
To compound the problem, a series of controversial measures have been taken at X, owned by Elon Musk, such as the restoration of accounts that spread false conspiracies and an advertising revenue sharing program with content creators that, according to researchers, incentivizes participation rather than accuracy.
Experts fear that these measures have increased the danger of disinformation causing real-world harm, amplifying hate and violence, especially in a rapidly evolving crisis scenario.
“Social media is struggling to keep up with the constant flow of misinformation and incitements to violence,” Andy Carvin of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Laboratory (DFRLab) told AFP.
In X “the changes have completely destroyed what was once one of its greatest strengths: monitoring breaking news and helping users separate fact from fiction.”
Scammers attack online
Social media users are being bombarded with fake combat photos, old videos from Syria repurposed to look like they’re in Gaza, and video game footage posing as a Hamas attack, experts say.
An image circulating on the internet purported to show Israeli soldiers captured by Hamas, but AFP fact-checkers discovered that the photo had been taken in 2022 during a military exercise in Gaza.
Checkers also found several posts on X, Facebook and TikTok promoting a fake White House document allocating $8 billion in military aid to Israel.
The huge amount of fake and old attack videos and images circulating (on the Internet) is making it difficult to understand what is happening
Alessandro Accorsi, senior analyst at the Crisis Group, said that “the huge amount of fake and old videos and images of attacks circulating (on the Internet) is making it difficult to understand what is happening” in Israel and Gaza.
Accorsi expressed “huge concern” that misinformation, especially fake images of hostages, could fuel violence.
“In crises such as terrorist atrocities, wars and natural disasters, people tend to turn to social media platforms for quickly accessible information,” Imran Ahmed, executive director of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told AFP.
“(But) the onslaught of scammers spreading lies and hate to gain engagement and followers, combined with algorithms that promote this extreme and disturbing content, is why social media is such a bad place to access reliable information.” .
Social networks lost credibility
To make matters worse, technology platforms appear to be abandoning efforts to raise the quality of information.
Social media traffic to major news websites from platforms such as Facebook and X has plummeted over the past year, according to data from research firm Similarweb, cited by US media. Musk himself received harsh criticism when he encouraged his nearly 160 million followers on X to follow two “good” accounts to stay up to date on the war. Both are known purveyors of false information.
Musk later deleted his message, but it had already racked up millions of views. X did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.
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“While there are still countless talented journalists and researchers still using X to help the public better understand what’s going on, the signal-to-noise ratio has become intolerable,” said DFRLab’s Carvin.
“Its usefulness as a reliable research and information tool is fundamentally broken and may never be recovered.”
2023-10-12 07:24:27
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