How Verified Accounts on X Thrive While Spreading Misinformation About the Israel-Hamas Conflict

With the gutting of content moderation initiatives at X, accounts with blue checks, once a sign of authenticity, are disseminating debunked claims and gaining more followers. Community Notes, X’s fact-checking system, hasn’t scaled sufficiently.

“My sisters have died,” the young boy sobbed, chest heaving, as he wailed into the sky. “Oh, my sisters.” As Israel began airstrikes on Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, posts by verified accounts on X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter, were being transmitted around the world.

Days later, a video posted by an account calling itself “ISRAEL MOSSAD,” another “verified” account, this time bearing the logo of Israel’s national intelligence agency, claimed to show Israel’s advanced air defense technology.

And following an explosion on Oct. 14 outside the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza where civilians were killed, the verified account of the Hamas-affiliated news organization Quds News Network posted a screenshot from Facebook claiming to show the Israel Defense Forces declaring their intent to strike the hospital before the explosion. It was seen more than half a million times.

None of these posts depicted real events from the conflict. The video of the grieving boy was from at least nine years ago and was taken in Syria, not Gaza. The clip of rockets exploding was from a military simulation video game. And the Facebook screenshot was from a now-deleted Facebook page not affiliated with Israel or the IDF. |Read more https://www.propublica.org/article/x-verified-accounts-misinformation-israel-hamas-conflict| propublica.org/article/x-verif…

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