Israel-Hamas war: How the crisis is unfolding online – The Verge

Exploding pagers kill nine and injure thousands in an attack on Hezbollah

2024-09-17T23:13:57-04:00

Ambulances rush wounded people to a hospital in the southern Lebanese city of Saida on September 17th. | Photo by Mahmoud Zayyat / AFP via Getty Images

Thousands of people have reportedly been injured by exploding pagers across Lebanon and Syria. Lebanon's health minister, Firass Abiad, said nine people, including a child, have been killed, and around 2,800 others have been injured, as reported by Lebanese state media agency NNA.

Later Tuesday evening, the New York Times reported:

Israel carried out its operation against Hezbollah on Tuesday by hiding explosive material within a new batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon, according to American and other officials briefed on the operation.

Reuters reports, based on information from a "senior Lebanese security source and anot …

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Israel reportedly used fake social media accounts to influence US lawmakers

2024-06-05T12:14:43-04:00

A secret social media influence campaign that attempted to lobby US lawmakers to support Israel's war on Gaza was organized and funded by the Israeli government, The New York Times reports.

According to the Times, Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs earmarked around $2 million for the campaign, which used hundreds of fake accounts impersonating made up people to target US lawmakers. The accounts posed as Americans and posted pro-Israel messages, calling on members of congress to fund Israeli military operations. The campaigns used OpenAI's ChatGPT to produce the posts and targeted several Black Democrats, like House Minority Leader Hakeem …

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Meta says it removed six influence campaigns including those from Israel and China

2024-05-29T14:34:41-04:00

Meta says it cracked down on propaganda campaigns on its platforms, including one that used AI to influence political discourse and create the illusion of wider support for certain viewpoints, according to its quarterly threat report published today. Some campaigns pushed political narratives about current events, including campaigns coming from Israel and Iran that posted in support of the Israeli government.

The networks used Facebook and Instagram accounts to try to influence political agendas around the world. The campaigns - some of which also originated in Bangladesh, China, and Croatia - used fake accounts to post in support of polit …

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Social media users are blocking celebs to support Palestine

2024-05-15T09:00:00-04:00

Every Met Gala has some sort of controversy, whether it's about the dress code and theme, the guest list, or a now-infamous brawl in an elevator at an afterparty. Because this is 2024, it's only fitting that the outrage began this year because of a TikTok audio track.

In a now-deleted video, an influencer named Haley Kalil shows off her elaborate floral dress and headpiece as she prepares to host a pre-Met Gala red carpet event. Her misstep was using an audio snippet in the background taken from the 2006 film Marie Antoinette, in which the titular character smirks and delivers one of the most famous (and spurious) one-liners of history: "Le …

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As Gaza is bombarded, GoFundMe donations are stuck in limbo

2024-02-29T11:00:00-05:00

By the end of January, more than 25,000 Palestinians had been reported killed as a result of Israel's military assault on Gaza. Just a handful of doctors remained at the largest medical facility in the Gaza Strip, where every day, 10 children lost one or both of their legs amid the Israeli military's siege. A weeklong communications blackout - the longest since October 7th - cut off civilians from their families and journalists from the rest of the world.

A. wanted to help. With a small group of friends, they set up a GoFundMe campaign with a modest goal of $300. They hoped to donate that money to organizers sending eSIMs, a digital versio …

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Some X ‘misinformation super-spreaders’ may be eligible for ads payouts

2023-11-24T10:35:38-05:00

Some blue check "Premium" subscribers on X, formerly Twitter, who are spreading misinformation may be eligible for X's ads revenue sharing program. That's the conclusion reached by NewsGuard, a for-profit misinformation watchdog organization, in its report that followed ads appearing on 30 posts from November 13th to the 22nd. The posts made conspiratorial claims about the Israel-Hamas war that reached a collective 92 million views.

Each of the 10 accounts NewsGuard referenced had over 100,000 followers - one of the metrics it uses to classify them as "misinformation super-spreader" posters.

NewsGuard's VP of communications, Veena McCoole, …

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TikTok is ‘aggressively removing’ videos promoting an Osama bin Laden manifesto

2023-11-16T18:11:09-05:00

TikTok is taking action against content promoting the manifesto Osama bin Laden wrote discussing his supposed motivations for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In a statement on X (formerly Twitter), TikTok says it's "proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform."

Dozens of videos about the manifesto, titled "Letter to America," have surfaced on TikTok over the past several days, with CNN reporting the topic amassed "at least" 14 million views by Thursday. Originally published in 2002, the manifesto criticizes the US government's presence in the Middle East and support of Israel. However, some …

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Telegram has blocked Hamas channels on Android because Google forced it to

2023-10-25T14:46:55-04:00

Social messaging platform Telegram has blocked channels used by Hamas, but only on Android phones due to violations of Google's app store guidelines. According to CNBC, two channels - hamas_com and al-Qassam brigades - were cut off for Android users, though other channels the group uses, like Gaza Now, are still accessible.

Telegram blamed the blocks on Google's app store guidelines, according to reporting in The Jerusalem Post. Users reportedly see an error saying the channels can't be viewed on "Telegram apps downloaded from the Google Play Store," implying that the ban doesn't extend to the app when it's downloaded from elsewhere or used …

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Blue checkmarks on X are ‘superspreaders of misinformation’ about Israel-Hamas war

2023-10-20T08:01:02-04:00

X’s community notes feature isn’t doing much to prevent the spread. | Illustration: The Verge

The vast majority of viral misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war being posted on X (formerly Twitter) is being pushed by verified users, according to a recent study by NewsGuard - a for-profit organization that rates the trustworthiness of news sites. After analyzing the 250 most-engaged X posts between October 7th and October 14th that promoted incorrect or unverified information relating to the war, researchers at NewsGuard found that verified X accounts were behind 74 percent of it.

The 250 posts analyzed within the study promoted one of 10 false or unsubstantiated war narratives identified by NewsGuard, including claims that CNN had …

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How podcasters are talking about the Israel-Gaza war

2023-10-19T17:45:00-04:00

I have been paying close attention to Brookings' political podcast database over the past week and a half to see how discussion of the war is taking shape. This is a highly underrated tool and an essential one if you care about the state of political podcasting. It looks at the top political podcasts on the left and right on Apple Podcasts (i.e., no Rogan) and catalogs what they're talking about. One feature breaks out the most-discussed topics on each side, and the language used is telling about how conservative podcasters are approaching the topic versus liberal ones.

Immediately after the terrorist attacks on October 7th, conservative po …

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