An information war has been underway since the militant group Hamas carried out deadly attacks on October 7 against Israel, which is bombing from the Gaza Strip. Experts deplore that social networks, at the heart of this storm, are putting too few resources in place to prevent violent images from being shared for financial or propaganda purposes on these platforms.
It’s difficult to remain impassive in the face of the surge of disturbing videos and images that have been circulating for a week and a half on X, Facebook, Tik Tok and YouTube, among others. The authors of these publications claim that they illustrate the state of affairs on the ground, in the Gaza Strip and in Israel, where a war has left more than 4,400 dead so far, including at least 3,000 Palestinians. However, in several cases these are misleading images taken out of context to fuel the cause of the authors of these publications.
“Social networks are a favorite space for all conflict propagandists,” explains assistant professor of political science at the University of Montreal, Simon Thibault, in an interview with Duty. We want to try to frame the event in his favor, to rally the population to his cause. »
Images and videos from the war in Ukraine or that which has raged in Syria since 2011 have been used in recent days to illustrate the conflict between Israel and Hamas. A video that went viral also showed American military planes which, according to the description accompanying it, had just arrived in Israel. However, these were rather images dating from 2019 filmed in California.
“This situation shows us on the one hand that the companies that manage social networks are not concerned [des fausses nouvelles] and secondly, the measures they have put in place to tackle this issue are not working,” laments Alex Mahadevan, the director of the MediaWise project, the media literacy initiative of the Poynter Institute, based in Florida .
Social media algorithms even encourage content creators to share violent or emotional content, since these are the ones that will circulate the most on these platforms.
“The most evocative content tends to be the one that spreads the most,” whether true or false, notes Scott Bade, a senior geotechnology analyst at Eurasia Group. “The platforms are struggling to adapt to this. »
Too little too late
Faced with the deluge of disinformation that poured into social networks alongside the Hamas attacks in Israel, the European Union has in turn called on X, Meta, TikTok and YouTube to act more to curb false information and violent content circulating on these platforms, threatening them with hefty fines otherwise.
Since then, these major social networks have claimed to have deleted hundreds of thousands of problematic videos and messages. However, these measures were taken late and come in a context where social networks have neglected in recent years to act head-on against the spread of false news on their platform.
An analysis by the American company Alethea, which specializes in disinformation on social networks, has also detected a network of at least 67 accounts on accounts did not appear to be linked together before the offensive.
According to the analysis, these accounts provided both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel content, suggesting that the intention behind the digital offensive was instead to stoke anger on both sides of the conflict, or simply to “capitalize on the current interest in the subject”.
“On X in particular, Elon Musk has made sure that verified users can monetize their content and make money,” explains Alex Mahadevan. They take advantage of the situation by sharing violent images that are revealed to be false. »
The Tech Transparency Project research collective also conducted its own investigation into X, and found that the platform gave free rein to Premium accounts to publish Hamas propaganda content. These posts, showing the group’s violent attacks in Israel, contradict the platform’s policies on violent and hateful content, according to the collective.
“There are people who take advantage of the situation to make money, there are propagandists who take advantage of the situation to spread their political message. And overall, the losers are the people who are trying to navigate this online situation and who have nowhere else to go,” emphasizes the director of MediaWise.
Political aims
The Israeli government, for its part, claimed last week that babies had been “decapitated” by the militant group Hamas. Information that could not be independently verified by media specialized in tracking false information, such as Snopes. The Israeli government later shared disturbing images of newborns allegedly killed and charred by Hamas. Photos which were shared by several continuous television news channels, such as CNN and Sky News, which however decided to blur these images.
However, the very idea that children were “decapitated” or burned by Hamas corresponds to the message that Israel wishes to convey, which in recent days has continued to compare this militant group to the Islamic State, “to barbarians,” notes Professor Simon Thibault.
“This is to say that we have an enemy who is barbaric and therefore that Hamas is no longer what you thought it was, it has become Daesh, hence the justice of our cause to end it with Hamas. So for Israeli propagandists, if they find photos that will support their propagandist rhetoric for the destruction of Hamas, they will do it,” notes the expert.
The latter thus recalls the importance of independently verifying photos and videos circulating on social networks, even when they are shared by governments. “History has shown us that states can also spread disinformation, particularly in the context of war. »