10/11/2023

NewsGuard Launches Israel-Hamas War Misinformation Tracking Center

Tracker documents the top false or egregiously unsubstantiated claims about the war that have already reached tens of millions across the globe in just the first days of the conflict

(October 11, 2023 — New York, NY) NewsGuard today launched the Israel-Hamas War Misinformation Tracking Center, a publicly available hub documenting the top false narratives emerging about the war, including where the claims emerged, how they are spreading and the level of online engagement they are receiving.

NewsGuard’s global team of misinformation analysts have identified 14 false or completely unsubstantiated claims circulating. Together, these claims had already garnered a collective 22 million views across X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and Instagram within three days of the Hamas attack. These claims are now in the process of being added to NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprints, a constantly updated, machine-readable database of false narratives available for licensees to access.

“We have been stunned at how quickly the misinformation machine has geared up since the Saturday attacks, although we probably should not have been given what we saw following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” said NewsGuard co-CEO Steven Brill. “And now, with generative AI having become a force multiplier, it seems clear that the news environment is only likely to get much worse, much faster.”

Malign actors on X and TikTok have been using techniques similar to those used to spread fake combat footage during the early stages of the Russia-Ukraine war. Some users have passed off video game footage as real, while others have shared clips from other incidents or wars entirely. 

Among the 14 false or completely unsubstantiated claims, NewsGuard has identified four main themes:

• The attack against Israel was instead a false flag;
• Israel is staging footage of dead children killed by Hamas; 
• The Biden administration approved an $8 billion aid package for Israel; and 
• Ukraine sold weapons to Hamas. 

Commentators on both sides of the conflict frequently took videos and photos out of context to promote these themes, the NewsGuard review found. On X, many of these users were verified, meaning that by becoming subscribers to the premium service on the platform, their false or misleading posts were amplified by the platform’s algorithm. “Verified” also could imply to those not familiar with X’s policies that the user’s identity or even credibility has been “verified.”

“The false flag theme is especially outrageous, given the barbarity of the attack on Israel,” said NewsGuard co-CEO Gordon Crovitz. “And the different varieties we are already seeing suggest that it’s a contagion that is only going to get far worse.”

For example, NewsGuard analysts have identified 31,745 posts and articles in English, French, German, and Italian about the Israel-Hamas conflict containing the phrase “false flag,” “staged,” or “psy op’ in those languages, using tools including a social media tracking service. The “false flag” posts and articles garnered 140,850 likes and reposts combined, according to the data. From Oct. 3 to Oct. 9, content containing the hashtag #falseflag increased by 462 percent compared to the previous seven-day period, experiencing a notable spike on Oct. 7, the day of the attack, according to the data.  

On Oct. 7, 2023, a user named @ShadowofEzra posted to 119,000 followers on X: “Here is your confirmation that the events taking place in Israel are a false flag. How stupid can you be to believe that Hamas has the ability to invade Israel by land, air and sea?” @ShadowofEzra linked to a video from NBC covering rocket attacks in Israel. As of Oct. 10, the post had received more than 12,300 likes and reposts.

A pro-Russia site Veterans Today (NewsGuard Trust Score: 22.5/100) linked the Gaza conflict to conspiracies about the 9/11 attacks, publishing an article titled “GAZA: 10/7 like 9/11, Was it a False Flag?” The article stated that “it could have been very useful for the Israeli establishment, as well as for the US and UK to achieve various objectives of their international politics in the current foreign political situation.” (See NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprint debunking claims about 9/11 here). 

Researchers, platforms, advertisers, government agencies, or other institutions interested in accessing the full list of war-related myths can contact us here.

 

About NewsGuard

Founded by media entrepreneur and award-winning journalist Steven Brill and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz, NewsGuard provides transparent tools to counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies. Since launching in 2018, its global staff of trained journalists and information specialists has collected, updated, and deployed more than 6.9 million data points on more than 35,000 news and information sources, and to catalog and track all of the top false narratives spreading online.

NewsGuard’s analysts, powered by multiple AI tools, operate the trust industry’s largest and most accountable dataset on news. These data are deployed to fine-tune and provide guardrails for generative AI models, enable brands to advertise on quality news sites and avoid propaganda or hoax sites, provide media literacy guidance for individuals, and support democratic governments in countering hostile disinformation operations targeting their citizens. 

Among other indicators of the scale of its operations is that NewsGuard’s apolitical and transparent criteria have been applied by its analysts to rate news sources accounting for 95% of online engagement with news across nine countries.