Israel-Hamas war has X and its users swimming in sea of disinformation
Enlarge / Elon Musk at the Viva Tech fair in Paris, France, on Friday, June 16, 2023. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)
In the wake of Hamas' deadly attacks on Israel this weekend-and the Israeli military's response-journalists, researchers, open source intelligence (OSINT) experts, and fact-checkers rushed to verify the deluge of raw video footage and images being shared online by people on the ground. But users of X (formerly Twitter) seeking information on the conflict faced a flood of disinformation.
While all major world events are now accompanied almost instantly by a deluge of disinformation aimed at controlling the narrative, the scale and speed at which disinformation was being seeded about the Israel-Hamas conflict is unprecedented-particularly on X.