X is drowning in misinformation after the US and Israeli attack on Iran

Minutes after Donald Trump announced that the American and Israeli governments had done so Launched a “major combat operation” against Iran In the early hours of Saturday morning, misinformation spread about the attack and Tehran’s response X flooded.

WIRED has reviewed Hundreds of posts on Xsome of which have received millions of views, and which promote misleading claims about the locations and size of the attacks.

Elon Musk’s social media platform is a verifiable mess: In some cases, alleged video footage of the attack shared in posts on X is months or years old. Many posts attributed video footage of apparent attacks Incorrect locations. A number of photos shared on X appear to have been altered or… Created using artificial intelligence. Other posts are trying Pass video game clips As scenes of conflict.

X did not respond to a request for comment. Under the supervision of MuskX became a A haven for misinformationespecially during major global breaking news events. At the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas, and more recently during it Anti-immigration enforcement protests in Los AngelesThe platform has been flooded with inaccurate and flawed posts.

Almost all of the most viral posts reviewed by WIRED on Saturday came from accounts marked with blue check marks, Which means they are paying X for its premium service They could be eligible to earn money based on the amount of engagement their posts generate, even if the content is fake. While some posts contain misleading information Community note It was appended below to correct the record, but it remains on the site, and it is not clear how many people viewed it before the notes appeared.

One video posted by an account with a blue check mark allegedly shows ballistic missiles over Dubai; The clip actually showed Iranian ballistic missiles fired at Tel Aviv in October 2024 mail It has been viewed more than 4.4 million times.

One of the most viral clips shared on X in the hours following the attack shows an Israeli fighter jet being shot down by Iranian air defense systems. The video was shared by dozens of accounts, including… One job Which has been viewed more than 3.5 million times. The source of the video is unclear, but there were no credible reports of any Israeli aircraft being shot down over Iran on Saturday.

Another account claims to be an expert in open source intelligence I posted a video Explosions are shown, along with the caption: “6 Iranian hypersonic missiles hit the Israeli port of Haifa, in which India invests. Serious damage reported.” The video has been viewed 64,000 times, but the footage was real He was arrested last July It shows an Israeli attack on the Ministry of Defense in Damascus, Syria.

In a number of cases, pro-Iranian accounts used images and footage from Saturday’s attacks to falsely claim successful strikes against Israel. “The impact of the Iranian missile is in Tel Aviv now,” the Iran Observer account wrote in a post that included a photo of Dubai. the mail It was viewed more than 200,000 times before it was deleted, but dozens of other posts sharing the same image and making the same claims remain on X.

The Tehran Times, a news agency allied with the Iranian government, published what appears to be… Image generated by artificial intelligence On X which claims to show that “a US radar in Qatar was completely destroyed today in an Iranian drone strike.” It was the use of images generated by artificial intelligence It has been marked on X by Tal Hagin, a senior analyst at open source intelligence firm Golden Owl. While there are reports that drone and missile attacks targeted the headquarters of the US Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain, there are no reports yet of similar successful attacks in Qatar.

A pro-Trump account, which also features a blue checkmark, posted photos claiming to show before-and-after photos of the palace of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, which was targeted during the missile attacks on Saturday. (In a post on Truth Social, Trump claimed that Khamenei was killed in an attack.) While the next photo accurately shows the palace after the attack, the previous photo shows the Mausoleum of Ruhollah Khomeini, which is located on the other side of Tehran. the mail It has been viewed 365,000 times.