{"id":1821,"date":"2023-10-14T20:21:55","date_gmt":"2023-10-14T20:21:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/business\/the-israel-hamas-war-reveals-how-social-media-sells-you-the-illusion-of-reality\/"},"modified":"2023-10-14T20:21:56","modified_gmt":"2023-10-14T20:21:56","slug":"the-israel-hamas-war-reveals-how-social-media-sells-you-the-illusion-of-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/?p=1821","title":{"rendered":"The Israel-Hamas war reveals how social media sells you the illusion of reality"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n As the Israel-Hamas war reaches the end of its first week, millions have turned to platforms including TikTok and Instagram in hopes of comprehending the brutal conflict in real time. Trending search terms on TikTok in recent days illustrate the hunger for frontline perspectives: From \u201cgraphic Israel footage\u201d to \u201clive stream in Israel right now,\u201d internet users are seeking out raw, unfiltered accounts of a crisis they are desperate to understand.\n <\/p>\n

\n For the most part, they are succeeding, discovering videos of tearful Israeli children wrestling with the permanence of death alongside images of dazed Gazans sitting in the rubble of their former homes. But that same demand for an intimate view of the war has created ample openings for disinformation peddlers, conspiracy theorists and propaganda artists \u2014 malign influences that regulators and researchers now warn pose a dangerous threat to public debates about the war.\n <\/p>\n

\n One recent TikTok video, seen by more than 300,000 users and reviewed by CNN, promoted conspiracy theories about the origins of the Hamas attacks, including false claims that they were orchestrated by the media. Another, viewed more than 100,000 times, shows a clip from the video game \u201cArma 3\u201d with the caption, \u201cThe war of Israel.\u201d (Some users in the comments of that video noted they had seen the footage circulating before \u2014 when Russia invaded Ukraine.)\n <\/p>\n

\n TikTok is hardly alone. One post on X, formerly Twitter, was viewed more than 20,000 times and flagged as misleading by London-based social media watchdog Reset for purporting to show Israelis staging civilian deaths for cameras. Another X post the group flagged, viewed 55,000 times, was an antisemitic meme featuring Pepe the Frog, a cartoon that has been appropriated by far-right white supremacists. On Instagram, a widely shared and viewed video of parachuters dropping in on a crowd and captioned \u201cimagine attending a music festival when Hamas parachutes in\u201d was debunked over the weekend and, in fact, showed unrelated parachute jumpers in Egypt. (Instagram later labeled the video as false.)\n <\/p>\n

\n This week, European Union officials sent warnings to TikTok, Facebook and Instagram-parent Meta, YouTube and X, highlighting reports of misleading or illegal content about the war on their platforms and reminding the social media companies they could face billions of dollars in fines if an investigation later determines they violated EU content moderation laws. US and UK lawmakers have also called on those platforms to ensure they are enforcing their rules against hateful and illegal content.\n <\/p>\n

\n Since the violence in Israel began, Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the social media watchdog group Center for Countering Digital Hate, told CNN his group has tracked a spike in efforts to pollute the information ecosystem surrounding the conflict.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cGetting information from social media is likely to lead to you being severely disinformed,\u201d said Ahmed.\n <\/p>\n

\n Everyone from US foreign adversaries to domestic extremists to internet <\/strong>trolls and \u201cengagement farmers\u201d has been exploiting the war on social media for their own personal or political gain, he added.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cBad actors surrounding us have been manipulating, confusing and trying to create deception on social media platforms,\u201d Dan Brahmy, CEO of the Israeli social media threat intelligence firm Cyabra, said Thursday in a video posted to LinkedIn. \u201cIf you are not sure of the trustworthiness [of content] \u2026 do not share,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u2018Upticks in Islamophobic and antisemitic narratives\u2019
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\n Graham Brookie, senior director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC,<\/strong> told CNN his team has witnessed a similar phenomenon. The trend includes a wave of first-party terrorist propaganda, content depicting graphic violence, misleading and outright false claims, and hate speech \u2013 particularly \u201cupticks in specific and general Islamophobic and antisemitic narratives.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Much of the most extreme content, he said, has been circulating on Telegram, the messaging app with few content moderation controls and a format that facilitates quick and efficient distribution of propaganda or graphic material to a large, dedicated audience. But in much the same way that TikTok videos are frequently copied and rebroadcast on other platforms, content shared on Telegram and other more fringe sites can easily find a pipeline onto mainstream social media or draw in curious users from major sites. (Telegram didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.)\n <\/p>\n

\n Schools in Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States this week urged parents to delete their children\u2019s social media apps over concerns that Hamas will broadcast or disseminate disturbing videos of hostages who have been seized in recent days. Photos of dead or bloodied bodies, including those of children, have already spread across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X this week.\n <\/p>\n

\n And tech watchdog group Campaign for Accountability on Thursday released a report identifying several accounts on X sharing apparent propaganda videos with Hamas iconography or linking to official Hamas websites. Earlier in the week, X faced criticism for videos unrelated to the war being presented as on-the-ground footage and for a post from owner Elon Musk directing users to follow accounts that previously shared misinformation (Musk\u2019s post was later deleted, and the videos were labeled using X\u2019s \u201ccommunity notes\u201d feature.)\n <\/p>\n

\n Some platforms are in a better position to combat these threats than others. Widespread layoffs across the tech industry, including at some social media companies\u2019 ethics and safety teams, risk leaving the platforms less prepared at a critical moment, misinformation experts say. Much of the content related to the war is also spreading in Arabic and Hebrew, testing the platforms\u2019 capacity to moderate non-English content, where enforcement has historically been less robust than in English-language content.\n <\/p>\n