Various groups are attempting to shape public opinion about the war between Israel and Hamas through the use (and misuse) of social media
Let’s start with Hamas.
Hamas might be barred from most social media platforms, such as Meta and X, but CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan and Brian Fung report that Hamas’ following has surged on the messaging app Telegram since the terrorist attack on Israel two weeks ago.
O’Sullivan and Fung write, “One account belonging to the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, has seen its following triple, and there has been a ten-fold increase in the number of views of videos and other content posted by the account.”
They went on to write, “The Telegram channel for Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, had about 200,000 followers at the time of the attack. The channel’s following has since more than tripled, according to an analysis by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. Before the attack, posts by the channel were viewed on average about 25,000 times — now they are viewed more than 300,000 times, a more than 10-fold increase. Another channel that posts video messages from a Hamas spokesperson had about 166,000 followers before October 7th and now has more than 414,000 followers, according to Memetica, a threat analysis company.”
How popular is Telegram? O’Sullivan and Fung write, “Telegram’s popularity in the US began to grow after the January 6th attack on the US Capitol when prominent peddlers of election conspiracy theories began using the platform after they were kicked off sites like Facebook and Twitter. Some 800 million people use Telegram globally, its founder says.”
Is there anything the U.S. can do to stop Telegram from spreading such dangerous hate? O’Sullivan and Fung write, “For years, critics of social media have tried to hold platforms accountable by suing them for the content they host, including material produced by terror groups. But US courts have generally looked askance at this type of litigation, and few if any potential content moderation lawsuits linked to the Israel-Hamas war will get very far, at least in the United States, according to John Bergmayer, an attorney specializing in platform liability issues at Public Knowledge, a US-based consumer advocacy group.”
Be sure to check out the CNN story for more information, including reports from X that it has removed “hundreds” of “Hamas-affiliated accounts.” And yet, the European Union announced it is looking into disinformation and illegal content about the war on X.
Meta, meanwhile, put out a statement last week saying, “… expert teams from across our company have been working around the clock to monitor our platforms, while protecting people’s ability to use our apps to shed light on important developments happening on the ground.”
Among the actions Meta says it is taking includes putting together “a special operations center staffed with experts, including fluent Hebrew and Arabic speakers, to closely monitor and respond to this rapidly evolving situation in real time.” According to the note, in the three days following Oct. 7, Meta “removed or marked as disturbing more than 795,000 pieces of content for violating these policies in Hebrew and Arabic.”
Meanwhile …
Israel has been using social media to help shape opinion about the war, as Liv Martin, Clothilde Goujard and Hailey Fuchs noted for Politico.
They wrote, “Since Hamas attacked thousands of its citizens last week, the Israeli government has started a sweeping social media campaign in key Western countries to drum up support for its military response against the group. Part of its strategy: pushing dozens of ads containing brutal and emotional imagery of the deadly militant violence in Israel across platforms such as X and YouTube, according to data reviewed by Politico.”
They added, “Israel’s attempt to win the online information war is part of a growing trend of governments around the world moving aggressively online in order to shape their image, especially during times of crisis. PR campaigns in and around wars are nothing new. But paying for online advertising targeted at specific countries and demographics is now one of governments’ main tools to get their messages in front of more eyeballs.”
And more cloudy information …
Social media also was working overtime Tuesday following the horrific news that an attack on the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City killed at least 500 people.
At first, Israel was blamed for the attack. Shortly thereafter, Israel Defense Forces blamed a failed rocket launch from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group.
Soon after, social media was filled with possible footage of the explosion and theories on what might have caused it. There were tweets making cases for one side or the other being the reason for the attack. But it also led to a pile of misinformation and propaganda that blamed one side or the other.
Although it wasn’t clear if he was commenting on a specific story, The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols tweeted, “It's okay to wait to find out more before commenting on something. Especially on a site like this one that has been re-engineered by its owner to provide unreliable information.”
Meanwhile, it was fascinating — and a bit rattling — to see how major newspapers shifted their headlines regarding the hospital attack.
The original headline on The New York Times homepage was “Israeli Airstrike Hits Gaza Hospital, Killing 500, Palestinian Health Ministry Says.” But it was later changed to “Israel and Palestinians Blame Each Other for Blast at Gaza Hospital That Killed Hundreds.”
The Washington Post’s original headline was “Hundreds feared killed in strike on Gaza hospital, Palestinian authorities say.” But that was eventually changed to “Israel, Palestinian officials trade blame for deadly strike on Gaza hospital.”
Those were just two examples involving two of the biggest news outlets in the country, but it was a serious reminder of the importance of language and prudence when writing headlines on high-stakes stories where the information is still vague.
A final thought
As social media became a wildfire of information and misinformation on Tuesday, Brandy Zadrozny, who covers misinformation, extremism and the internet for NBC News, tweeted, “I’m so angry about how impossible it is to tell what’s real or fake on this site anymore. There’s nowhere else to go so we all just stay here and act like anything is reliable. It wasn’t perfect but now all guardrails are gone, replaced by perverse incentives to fake. It’s awful.”
Notable coverage regarding the Israeli-Hamas war
X to test out charging new users
It’s been rumored for a while now that Elon Musk was going to charge people to use X, formerly known as Twitter. That now appears to be coming to fruition for new users of the social media site. Fortune’s Kylie Robison broke the news Tuesday night that X will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features including the ability to tweet, reply, quote, repost, like and bookmark. For now, X is just testing this out in New Zealand and the Philippines.
X’s support account confirmed the news by posting a tweet that said, “Starting today, we're testing a new program (Not A Bot) in New Zealand and the Philippines. New, unverified accounts will be required to sign up for a $1 annual subscription to be able to post & interact with other posts. Within this test, existing users are not affected. This new test was developed to bolster our already successful efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform and bot activity, while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount. It is not a profit driver. And so far, subscription options have proven to be the main solution that works at scale.”
The tweet then pointed readers to X’s “Not a Bot” story on its help center page.
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