In the hours after Iran announced drone and missile attacks against Israel on April 13, fake and misleading posts spread on X almost immediately. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a non-profit think tank, found numerous posts with content such as the following: It was meant to reveal the attack and its impact, but instead it showed AI-generated videos, photos, and even footage of rockets being fired, explosions, and even President Joe Biden in military uniform during the night. They also reused footage from other conflicts.
Only 34 of these misleading posts received more than 37 million views, according to ISD. Many of the accounts that posted incorrect information were also verified. In other words, they pay $X per month for “blue checks” and their content is amplified by the platform’s algorithms. ISD also discovered that some of the accounts claimed to be experts in open source intelligence (OSINT). This has become another way to lend legitimacy to posts in recent years.
One X post claimed that “World War III has officially begun” and included a video that appeared to show rockets being fired at night, when the video was actually from 2021. Other posts purported to show the use of the Iron Dome, except that it was from a YouTube video posted in . , an Israeli missile defense system during an attack, but the video was actually from October 2023. Both of these posts received hundreds of thousands of views in the hours after the attack was announced, and both came from verified accounts. Iranian media also shared a video of the Chilean wildfires earlier this year, claiming it showed the aftermath of an attack. This also started to spread on X.
“The fact that so much misinformation is being spread by accounts seeking influence and economic gain is a testament to the fact that Iranian state media outlets are disguising footage of the Chilean wildfires as damage caused by Iranian attacks. “Israel needs to claim this operation as a military success,” said Isabel Francis Wright, director of technical and social affairs at ISD. “The corruption of the information environment has undermined viewers' ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood on a frightening scale.”
X did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
Misinformation about conflicts and crises has long been a fixture on social media, but X is also often used for critical real-time information. But under Elon Musk's leadership, the company cut back on content moderation and misinformation became rampant. In the days following the October 7th Hamas attack, X was flooded with disinformation, making it difficult for his legitimate OSINT researchers to surface information. Under the mask, X promoted a crowdsourced community notes feature as a way to combat misinformation on the platform, with mixed results. Although some of the content identified by ISD subsequently received community notes, he had only received two posts at the time the organization released its findings.
“During a crisis, premium accounts essentially pollute the information ecosystem with half-truths and falsehoods through misidentified media and blatantly false images suggesting that an event was triggered. It seems to be a repeating pattern with platforms like: specific actors or states,” says Mustafa Ayad, ISD Director-General for Asia, Middle East and Africa. “This is happening and will continue to happen, making it even harder to know what is true and what is false.”
And for things that are part of X, subscription model and Advertising revenue sharing modelgoing viral could potentially mean making money.
It is not clear whether some of the users spreading false or misleading information identified by ISD were monetizing their content, but another According to the report, between October 7 and February 7, 10 influencers, including far-right influencer Jackson Hinkle, posted anti-Semitic and Islamophobic content about the conflict. was able to increase the number of supporters. Six of the accounts investigated by CCDH were part of X's subscription program, and all 10 were authenticated users. Prominent influencers participating in X's ad revenue sharing program will receive a portion of their ad revenue based on “organic ad impressions that appear in replies” to their content, the magazine said. company.