X (Twitter) a Hotbed of Misinformation on Israel-Hamas War

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

X, formerly Twitter, now has an incentive structure that aids the spreading of misinformation. Two recent studies found the most influential accounts for news about the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack were unreliable sources.

The first study was by NewsGuard, an organization devoted to creating tools to counter misinformation, found that 74% of X users who created the most viral false or unsubstantiated posts on Israel/Hamas were "verified" or "blue checkmark" users.

The second study by the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington found that the seven most influential accounts in the three days following the Oct. 7 attack were non-traditional news sources that posted unsourced or weakly sourced information. Some of these posts spread false information. Some were pro-Israel while others were anti-Israel. Most were emotionally charged.

“At its core what we’re looking at here is a different vision of what news is. It’s fast, it’s unvetted, and it’s very often unsourced. And there’s every indication that the shift is not accidental and that it’s part of a vision of what news is going to be on X," one of the researchers told NBC News. “The people who are engaged, they probably buy into this vision, but we have doubts that it serves the public well,” he added.

In other words, X has become a misinformation superspreader because of the incentive structures built into the platform. In fairness, X/Twitter has always been a misinformation superspreader, even before Elon Musk bought it. But two big changes that these two reports highlight have made the problem worse.

1) Anyone can get a "verified" or "blue check" account simply by paying $8 per month and those accounts aren't even actually verified. So now anyone can create a newsy sounding account and post newsy looking posts regardless of the reliability of their sources or information, and the blue check provides them with the appearance of legitimacy.

2) Posts with links are less likely to be viewed on X, Musk himself pointed out. This means that posts without links to a source will get more views on X than posts with links, on average. So one of the more important standards in journalism — citing your sources — is actually discouraged on the platform.

These studies remind us that we all need to be better consumers of our social media, lest we help spread false or overly-sensationalized information. AVC has a resource that can help.

Mending Division Academy is a set of six courses for small groups or individuals that address some of the major sources of division in American churches today. For this newsletter, I'll highlight the course on social media.

The five session course is called, "When Social Media Divides Us: Confronting Our Internet Habits," and it's taught by Chris Martin, Content Marketing Editor for Moody Publishers, and Austin Gravely, Social Media Manager for The Gospel Coalition. The instructors don't encourage a boycott of social media, as you probably guessed from their job titles. Instead, they aid our awareness of social media pitfalls and discuss practical habits and practices in order to use social media well.

Here is a short clip from one of the sessions:

You can order the course now, or any of the other courses, for half off until the end of the month with the code Oct50.

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What Else We're Reading

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Here is Charlie Kirk strongly implying that Benjamin Netanyahu knowingly allowed Hamas to kill over 1,200 Israelis, behead babies, and take over one hundred hostages back to Gaza in order to expand his power.

Here is Lauren Chen, a Turning Point USA contributor, praising well-known anti-Semite Nick Fuentes for his “balanced and rational” take on the situation between Israel and Hamas. Fuentes has questioned the Holocaust and believes Jews have no place in Western Civilization.

Here is Morgan Ariel, another Turning Point USA employee, attacking Zionism. Here she is attacking Ben Shapiro for being, well, Jewish. Here she is retweeting documented Anti-Semite Jackson Hinkle to, again, attack Ben Shapiro.

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PsyPost: "New research helps explain why many Republicans see Donald Trump as honest"

The findings illustrate that misinformation can be linked to a unique conception of honesty that emphasises sincerity over accuracy, and which appears to be used by Republicans – but not Democrats – as a gateway to sharing low-quality information.

Why does this happen? Another aspect of our results hints at an answer. We found that belief-speaking is particularly associated with negative emotions. So if Republican politicians want to use negative emotional language to criticise Democrats, this goal might be more readily achieved by sharing low-quality information because high-quality domains tend to be less derogatory of the main parties.

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