The internet is big and hard to control. In a world where anyone can say anything to a massive audience without any credibility, it becomes hard to know what’s real and what’s fake.
Over the past week, the Israel-Palestine conflict has reached new heights as the Israeli government engages against Hamas, the Palestinian group in charge of a small piece of land known as the Gaza strip. The war’s toll continues to rise, as thousands of lives have been taken since the start of the conflict.
After browsing through X, formerly known as Twitter, for a few minutes, you can clearly see the tension that exists there.
Much of the misconception comes from the lack of credible information provided in posts’ captions. For example, many videos have been miscaptioned and posted out of context, such as many related to the massacre at an Israeli music festival.
A video depicting a paraglider descending onto a music festival is one such example of this. The video has been flagged by X for out of context presentation, but has not been taken down. Keeping videos such as these on the platform enables false information to spread, as the context of the videos is as important to their understanding as the content itself.
Without a caption, there is no explanation as to what the viewer is watching, allowing for people to easily draw incorrect conclusions.
Social media users have also spread misinformation through the mimicking of real news sites and the usage of accounts which have had faulty information before. Elon Musk even sanctioned these accounts before later removing the remarks. However, the issue still stands that questionable sources were promoted by the CEO of a social media company.
When looking into one account promoted by Musk, one can see there are many claims with no evidence despite the account being verified — there are no links to the correspondents cited, and in some cases, no claimed source at all. With such accounts being verified, they are put on the same level as actual news sources which have to abide by journalistic standards, giving them credibility without accountability.
Another X user posted a claim that the U.S. is going to war as it bombs the anti-Israel terrorist group Hezbollah which attacked Israel this week. Though there has been fighting between Israel and the group, there is no evidence the U.S. has been bombing Hezbollah or Iran.
The U.S. has, however, pledged support to Israel and plans to give them military aid.
Other media sources like The Wall Street Journal have also made false accusations with regard to Israel.
In an article named “Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel Over Several Weeks,” the news outlet claims Iran helped plan the assault that began with the deadliest day in Israeli history.
However, when asked about this claim, a National Security Council spokesperson explicitly stated the U.S. and Israel have no evidence Iran had any initial involvement. In fact, the U.S. found evidence to the contrary — that Iranian officials were surprised by Hamas’ attack. Yet, the article also stated intelligence is ongoing, and that this conclusion could change.
Since the beginning of the conflict, unconfirmed reports and rumors have been rampant. Perhaps the most notable example of falling into a trap of unconfirmed reports is President Joe Biden’s remarks on seeing graphic images of Israeli children, which have not been independently verified by the White House or State Department to date.
The point is not to call out Biden, but instead to show how overzealous reporting can get to all of us — even the president.
Nobody is infallible, meaning it’s up to the individual to find good and credible information considering media sources may omit the truth or make baseless claims.
We see so many unfounded claims spread throughout the internet’s clutches without any fact checking, evidence or context. There are countless videos circulating the internet where the sources are questionable and only a caption accompanies them.
To counter so much information, it falls onto the reader to filter what they consume.
Many posts pass by on a doom scroll to nowhere, but not everything you see can be believed. This war has emphasized the ever-present conflict between freedom of speech and quality of information; even leading to a probe by the European Union into X for misinformation and propaganda spreading on their watch.
Elon Musk once emphasized that anyone can be a citizen journalist on his platform. Yet, with so many different actors, agendas and tidbits of information, the average reader is lost in contradictory reports. With controversial events like the Israel-Palestine conflict, it’s always best to question the information in front of us — the truth doesn’t make itself obvious.
