Elon Musk’s social media platform X reported that the company took down hundreds of Hamas-related accounts and thousands of misleading posts following Hamas’ deadly terrorist attack on Israel. On Tuesday, Oct. 10, the European Union sent a letter to Musk demanding that X address illegal content and misinformation about the attacks within 24 hours or face penalties under the EU’s strict Digital Services Act that was recently enacted. The penalties could include fines in the billions.
NBC News tech correspondent Jake Ward explained the firestorm of misleading information circulating on social media following the attacks.
“There is just this proliferation of misleading content, and when it is not just made up,” Ward said. “It is out of context or out of time; this video of an attack by Israeli forces on Gaza is, in fact, that, what it purports to be, but it is from May, not from this current set of attacks.”
A post reportedly seen by more than 800,000 people on X included a video of U.S. military aircraft said to be heading to Israel with equipment. The problem, according to BBC journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh, is the video was taken in 2019.
It is the most recent example of social media’s uphill battle in thwarting the dissemination of misinformation.
“The past few days have just been this vivid lesson in the fact that you literally cannot trust what social media feeds you these days,” Ward said.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino responded to the EU Wednesday, Oct. 11, saying the company has “redistributed resources and refocused internal teams who are working around the clock to address this rapidly evolving situation.”
However, the sheer number of posts makes it hard for the social media company to keep up. Yaccarino wrote that the company has already moved to take down or label tens of thousands of posts that break the company’s rules on violent speech, manipulated media and graphic media.
In response to Yaccarino’s letter, the EU said it would analyze the measures X is taking and will consider next steps.
The seemingly nonstop wave of misinformation comes just a week after X announced it was scaling back the teams of people patrolling misinformation.
“X, as you mentioned, is really the locus of so much of this stuff because they have cut back so many of their teams,” Ward said on NBC. “Their elections integrity team, their trust and safety teams, all of those have been scaled back.”
X is not the only platform dealing with misinformation about the Hamas attacks. In a similar letter to Facebook’s parent company, Meta, the EU gave Mark Zuckerberg 24 hours to respond with measures that his social media platform is taking to counter the spread of misinformation about the attacks under the same Digital Services Act. The act forces major social media companies to remove illegal content from their platforms.
A Meta spokesperson said that its teams are working around the clock and teaming up with third-party fact-checkers to “limit the spread of misinformation.”
