Amid concerns about fake content and disinformation spreading on social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) about the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, the accuracy of Elon Musk’s much-endorsed feature Community Notes has come under scrutiny after it erroneously flagged a graphic video shared by Donald Trump Jr.
What Happened: On Tuesday, Trump Jr. took to X and shared a graphic video that purported to showcase Hamas fighters attacking Israeli citizens on Saturday morning. The son of former U.S. President Donald Trump wrote, “You don’t negotiate with this. There’s only one way to handle this,” adding that the video had come from a “source within Israel.”
Within hours, the post got shared widely on the platform, attracting the attention of X’s user-generated fact-checking system, Community Notes, which added context to the post, stating: “This is an old video and is not from Israel,” accompanied by a link to the referred video.
However, it has now been verified that the video posted by Trump Jr. was real. It was recorded during Saturday’s attack on Israel and showed Hamas fighters shooting, reported WIRED, citing independent OSINT analysis.
The Community Notes user cited an Iranian platform, Wisgoon, as evidence it was an older video. However, an open-source intelligence researcher, OSINTtechnical, affirmed the video’s authenticity by tracing its origin to a Gaza civilian’s Facebook livestream on the same Saturday morning.
At the time of writing, the video has been deleted from the platform, but the Community Notes now read, “Wired magazine reported this Hamas Video is actually real with research confirming. It was falsely flagged as in a Community Note as being years old,” along with a link to the report.
Why It’s Important: Following the attack during the weekend, X CEO Linda Yaccarino canceled her appearance at the Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference, citing the Israel crisis as the reason and stating that her priority is to ensure safety on the platform.
At the time, the microblogging site said X’s Community Notes would be pivotal in combating potential misinformation.
However, the incident above has underscored that Community Notes may not always deliver its intended purpose and, at times, inadvertently contribute to disinformation on the platform instead of rectifying it.
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