Old videos, wrongly attributed to the last few days, increase concern over the tragedy and promote misinformation on both sides of the dispute
In the days following the group’s attack Hamas THE Israel, disinformation, violent videos and family requests information about missing loved ones compete for space means of social communication.
The terrorist offensive that began last Saturday (7) resulted in the deaths of at least 1,300 people by Wednesday morning (12). Hamas also captured dozens of hostages. In response, the Israelis have killed more than 1,400 people in Gaza to date, according to local authorities.
Hamas’ actions have been widely documented and disseminated by the terrorists themselves mainly through social networks and messaging apps Telegram. This content was later shared on other platforms and used to identify possible missing people who had been killed in the conflict.
The diffusion of old videos, falsely attributed to the last few days, increases the amazement at the tragedy. To the X (former-Twitter), some content shared by thousands of people was published by verified accounts eligible for monetization of their content.
There has also been the circulation of fake news on the platforms of Objective (owner of Facebook and Instagram), which led the European Union commissioner, Thierry Breton, to send open letters to the owners of big tech, Elon Musk AND Marco Zuckerberg, alerting you to the problem and demanding immediate responses to mitigate it. OR Tick tock was also notified this Thursday (12).
#Tic toc has a particular obligation to protect children and adolescents from violent content and terrorist propaganda, as well as from deadly challenges and potentially life-threatening content.#DSA establishes very clear obligations that TikTok must comply with.
Letter to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew⤵️ pic.twitter.com/J1tpVzXaYR
— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) October 12, 2023
Musk responded to Breton by asking him to openly list on X which accounts were promoting misinformation so he could take action. In his rejoinder, Breton said his team will analyze the request.
We carry out our actions in the open.
No deal on the back.
Please explicitly post your concerns on this platform.
—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 11, 2023
We received the response from @X to our letter expressing concern about the spread of illegal content and disinformation related to the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.
THE #DSA the audit team will analyze the response and decide the next steps.
— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) October 12, 2023
The excess of fake news is part of the clash of narratives promoted by the parties involved in the conflict, according to experts interviewed by Byte. It is a situation that has occurred a few times in the recent past, such as the massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019; or in the war between Russia and Ukraine, which has been ongoing for more than a year.
The horror in the images helps identify the hostages
Hamas was already facing restrictions on its activities on social networks such as Instagram, Facebook and also the less moderate X before the attack. This meant that much of the group’s communication was directed at the Telegram messenger.
Telegram is a private messaging app, but it gets social network status thanks to its channels AND supergroups, which allow you to send messages to thousands of subscribers at the same time, without any type of moderation. WhatsApp recently gained features similar to Telegram, called community AND channels.
The videos published on Telegram served as material to identify the locations of the attacks, count the hostages and obtain more precise information on where Hamas is operating.
“It’s intentional: the goal is to generate a feeling of helplessness, paralysis and humiliation,” Michael Horowitz, a security analyst at consultancy Le Beck International, told AFP.
One case that gained notoriety was that of Shani Louk, a German-Israeli woman who was attending a festival near the border.
Louk was captured and shown on video being taken through the streets of Gaza and can be identified by her tattoos and dreadlocks. On Tuesday (10), her mother told the German newspaper Bild that her daughter had been found alive in a Gaza hospital in critical condition.
Another video shows Yaffa Adar, 85, in a car driven by Hamas members. In a post on Facebook, his niece Adva Adar asks for information.
“No one talks to us, they don’t know how to say anything,” he wrote.
On the same social network as Meta, the Byte profiles and groups found who publish photos of missing people and gather information on their possible whereabouts.
Israelis share photos of friends and family who they say were kidnapped by Hamas fighters. They are also asking the public to help spread the word in hopes of bringing them back to safety.
How technology makes the Israeli army stronger
Fake news is a symptom of narrative dispute
Many of the videos labeled as misleading were shared by verified users in X, who pay to have the blue seal (who prove their identity) and are eligible monetization of content. The publication, whose video supposedly showed Israeli retaliation, actually referred to an event preceding the new conflict in Israel, as confirmed by the Reuters news agency.
“The Israeli Air Force is attacking terrorist targets in Gaza,” read the caption of the video, which also gained shares on Facebook. But the video was about airstrikes that occurred in May, the news agency reported.
Both the Israeli government and Hamas use social media to do this build narratives at the same time, to a certain extent, they generate disinformation, according to Lucas Leite, professor of international relations at the Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (FAAP).
“Everything is an attempt to build and overcome the current narrative, including the construction of the idea of who is a victim,” he comments.
It wouldn’t be the first time that the platforms served as a stage for different narratives to meet, according to the professor.
“It happens during elections, when a group commits violence, when it comes to China, or even the war between Russia and Ukraine. These are situations where people think they should take sides and not understand conflicts in a broader way,” he said. law.
For Rodrigo Reis, internationalist and founder of the Global Attitude Institute, fake news appears as a natural reflection of the entire process. The expert also cites a transposition into the dynamics of the fighting of internal narratives from other countries, such as Brazil itself.
“It’s an ideological clash, because there is one evangelical current very strong in favor of Israel. We also have the example of Bolsonaro government, who was supportive of issues related to Israeli recognition. We can also observe that some left-wing currents are alongside the Palestine“, he comments.
Source: Terra
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