Following the militant group Hamas’s attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliatory strikes in the Palestinian enclave Gaza, social media firms have seen a surge in misinformation related to the conflict, including doctored images and mislabelled videos, alongside images of graphic violence.
Key points:
- Social media platforms are seeing more misinformation and disinformation during the Israel-Gaza conflict
- The EU has told platforms to remove this content, or face severe penalties
- Experts say Elon Musk’s X is seeing the largest volume of misinformation
The European Union has told technology companies to remove illegal content, misinformation and disinformation from their social media platforms, or risk facing severe penalties.
On Tuesday, EU industry chief Thierry Breton told billionaire Elon Musk to curb disinformation on his platform X (formerly Twitter), warning it was being used to disseminate illegal content and false information.
Mr Breton issued a similar warning to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, urging his company — which runs Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads — to ensure strict compliance with European law.
In his letters to both men, Mr Breton said their companies had 24 hours to inform the EU how they were stopping harmful content on their platforms.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino said the social media platform had removed hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts and taken action to remove or label tens of thousands of pieces of content since the militant group’s attack on Israel
Mr Musk responded by touting X’s approach using crowdsourced fact-checking labels.
“Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports,” Mr Musk wrote on X. “Please list the violations you allude to on X, so that the public can see them.”
Mr Breton replied that Mr Musk was “well aware” of the reports on “fake content and glorification of violence”.
“Up to you to demonstrate that you walk the talk,” he said.
X has redistributed resources and refocused internal teams to address the rapidly evolving situation, Ms Yaccarino said, without specifying the changes. She added that the company assembled a leadership group to assess the situation shortly after the attack.
“We wish to reiterate that we welcome further engagement with you and your team, including a meeting, to address any specific questions and look forward to receiving further specifics to which we can respond” she said in the letter to Mr Breton, posted on X.
X has responded to more than 80 take-down requests received in the EU within required the timeline and has not received any notices from Europol regarding illegal content on the platform, the letter states.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, has also sought to remind social media companies they are legally required to prevent the spread of harmful content related to Hamas.
Any firm found to be in breach of European laws faces a fine worth up to 6 per cent of its global turnover, and repeat offenders could even be banned from operating in Europe altogether.
Misinformation on X is ‘unlike anything’, experts say
Experts say that under Elon Musk, X has culled staff and deteriorated to the point that it’s not just failing to clamp down on misinformation but is favouring 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 can be eligible for payments from X, creating a financial incentive to post whatever gets the most reaction — including misinformation.
Ian Bremmer, a prominent foreign policy expert, posted on X that the level of disinformation on the Israel-Hamas war “being algorithmically promoted” on the platform “is unlike anything I’ve ever been exposed to in my career as a political scientist”.
On Monday, X’s safety team said it had seen an increase in users in the Israel and Gaza conflict areas, as well as “more than 50 million posts globally focusing on the weekend’s terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas”.
“As the events continue to unfold rapidly, a cross-company leadership group has assessed this moment as a crisis requiring the highest level of response,” the company said.
While plenty of real imagery and accounts of the carnage have emerged, they have been intermingled with social media users pushing false claims and misrepresenting videos from other events.
Among the fabrications are false claims that a top Israeli commander was kidnapped, a doctored White House memo purporting to show US President Joe Biden announcing billions in aid for Israel, and old unrelated videos of Russian President Vladimir Putin with inaccurate English captions. Even a clip from a video game was passed on as footage from the conflict.
Facebook, TikTok, YouTube also flooded
Other social media platforms, like TikTok, YouTube and Facebook, are also dealing with unsubstantiated rumours and falsehoods about the conflict, playing the usual whack-a-mole that emerges every time a news event captivates the world’s attention.
A Meta spokesperson told Reuters that a team of experts, including Hebrew and Arabic speakers, were monitoring the “rapidly evolving situation in real-time”.
A YouTube spokesperson also told the news agency that 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 organisations, including videos filmed by Hamas.
Snap, which owns messaging app Snapchat, said its map feature, which lets users view public posts from anywhere in the world, will remain available in the conflict region, with teams monitoring for misinformation and content which incites violence.
TikTok, meanwhile, is “almost as bad” as X, says Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the investigative collective Bellingcat. She previously worked at Twitter on Community Notes, its crowdsourced fact-checking service.
But unlike X, TikTok has never been known as a vital source for real-time information about current events.
“I think everyone knows to take TikTok with a grain of salt,” Ms Koltai said, adding that on X “you see people actively profiteering off of misinformation because of the incentives they have to spread the content that goes viral — and misinformation tends to go viral”.
Britain’s Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan summoned the UK bosses of X, TikTok, Snapchat, Google (which owns YouTube) and Meta for a meeting on Wednesday to discuss “the proliferation of anti-Semitism and extremely violent content” following the Hamas attack.
She says she demanded they outline the actions they’re taking to quickly remove content that breaches the UK’s online safety law or their terms and conditions.
Gordon Pennycook, an associate professor of psychology at Cornell University who studies misinformation, says people are desperate for information, but it can be hard for them to decipher the truth.
“Social media context may actively interfere with people’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction,” he says.
AP/Reuters
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