As the war between Israel and Palestine’s Hamas continues following the horrific terror attack on Israel on 7 October, a parallel battle is being fought on social media by the supporters of both sides. While Hamas terrorists have murdered over 1300 innocent Israeli citizens, by shooting them, stabbing and beheading them, and even burning them alive, Islamist supporters of Palestine are busy claiming that reports of such atrocities by Hamas are false. As a consequence, social media platform X, formerly Twitter, has removed hundreds of such pro-Hamas accounts.
In a letter posted on X, CEO Linda Yaccarino said on Thursday that the social media platform has removed hundreds of accounts linked to Hamas and moderated thousands of posts since the terrorist organisations deadly attack on Israel. The X CEO said this in a letter addressed to European Commissioner Thierry Breton, a day after the EU official gave the platform a 24-hour deadline to address “illegal content & disinformation” regarding the Israel-Hamas war.
Today @lindayaX responded to @ThierryBreton’s letter detailing our work in response to the terrorist attack on Israel. pic.twitter.com/yZtaOVGpHG
— Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs) October 12, 2023
The EU direction was issued under the newly implemented EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), as per which large online platforms like X and Meta’s Facebook are required to take more proactive measures to remove illegal content and address threats to public security and civic discourse.
“X is committed to serving the public conversation, especially in critical moments like this and understands the importance of addressing any illegal content that may be disseminated through the platform. There is no place on X for terrorist organisations or violent extremists groups and we continue to remove such accounts in real time, including proactive groups,” Linda Yaccarino wrote in the letter.
“Since the terrorist attack on Israel, we have taken action to remove or label tens of thousands of pieces of content, while Community Notes are visible on thousands of posts, generating millions of impressions,” added the letter.
Yaccarino further expressed X’s willingness to engage further with the EU and its team, including holding a meeting to address any specific concerns. The CEO eagerly awaited additional details to which the platform could respond effectively. The X CEO said the platform has also responded to “more than 80” content takedown requests related to the conflict from authorities in the EU, adding the company has responded in a “diligent and objective” manner.
Linda Yaccarino also talked about the ‘Community Notes’, feature of X, which allows users to fact check or add context to posts containing misleading or fake information. The CEO added that “more than 700 unique notes” have appeared next to posts linked to Hamas’ attack and the subsequent conflict.
However, the same community notes feature is also being used to spread misinformation, and such community notes were removed after the notes labelled genuine information as fake. Notably, Islamists on social media have been trying to claim that Hamas didn’t kill babies, and images of infants killed by Hamas were posted on X yesterday, such Islamists added community notes claiming that the images are fake and AI generated.
When actor Ben Shapiro posted photo of the charred body of a baby, such community notes were added, claiming it to be AI-generated. Some even posted screenshots of dubious ‘AI checker’ tools, which confirmed that the image was AI-generated.
Ben had written in the tweet, “You wanted pictorial proof of dead Jewish babies? Here it is, you pathetic Jew-haters. Israel will minimize civilian casualties. But Israel will not allow the pieces of human shit who did this to live. Every ounce of blood spilled in Gaza is on Hamas.”
But the fact is that the image is real, and it was posted by the official X account of the Prime Minister of Israel, along with other images including that of one showing an infant with bullet holes.
After it emerged that the image is real and the community note was wrong, it was removed from the tweet. However, damage was already by this X tool which is supposed to fight fake news, as it was used to spread fake news, claiming a real image to be fake.
