Report: seven unreliable X accounts, some promoted by Elon Musk, dominated English-language news on X around the Israel-Hamas war from October 7 to October 10
This report puts early evidence behind concerns that X's crisis-news distribution could be captured by a small set of high-reach accounts, even as the platform had recently required sources for proposed Community Notes.
Later coverage suggests the issue was not confined to an initial surge: researchers found Notes often arrived hours after posts during the conflict, while another analysis found misleading posts continued to draw substantial attention from verified accounts.
First-order effects
A small number of unreliable accounts gained outsized influence over what English-language users encountered as news during a fast-moving conflict.
Musk's promotion of some of those accounts increased scrutiny of whether prominent account endorsements can override ordinary signals of source reliability on X.
Second-order effects
X's source-linked Community Notes rule faces a practical test: it must identify and contextualize high-velocity claims quickly enough to matter, rather than merely add evidence after they spread.
If reach remains concentrated among accounts that are rewarded for speed and engagement rather than reliability, platform verification and recommendation systems risk becoming a distribution advantage for crisis misinformation.
The pattern points to moderation moving beyond post-by-post fact checks toward accountability for amplification choices, including promotion and ranking of influential accounts.
The trend: Crisis news on social platforms is increasingly shaped by how recommendation, verification, and prominent-account amplification allocate attention before corrective systems can respond.
This is fascinating research. X under Elon Musk has basically created a uniquely high-volume high-noise BS machine by incentivizing unsourced, unlinked, emotionally exploitive news slime from engagement chasers and ranking them higher than every major avenue for legitimate repor…
“At its core what we're looking at here is a different vision of what news is,” @uwcip research scientist @mikecaulfield told @nbcnews in an interview. “It's fast, it's unvetted, and it's very often unsourced. And there's every indication that the shift is not accidental and th…
Colleagues at the UW Center for an Informed Public identified the most viewed X accounts in conversations about Israel/Hamas (using the tiny window of transparency we have left on that platform), and found a new set of crisis-tweeting “elites” that reflect a Musk-disrupted inform…
One interesting opportunity there is that non English sources are in the same ux and algorithmic environment (link devaluing, end of blue check for notability), but are not as engaged by Musk. So it might be possible to get a bit more precision on what is causal and what is not.
“The lack of robust citations contributes to the decontextualization of the events presented. From the information given, audiences have limited ability to fact check claims or gain a more nuanced understanding of them.” — READ: www.cip.uw.edu/2023/10/20/n... [embedded post]
Our rapid research lead, Mike Caulfield (@mikecaulfield.bsky.social) has been building new collection tools and methods to adapt to the lack of transparency on Twitter/X. We're also working on collecting & integrating data from new platforms to understand an increasingly fragment…
Second, a detailed report from a team led by my colleagues @katestarbird.bsky.social and @mikecaulfield.bsky.social here at the UW's Center for an Informed Public on changing norms and the general disintegration of verifiability and credibility among the new post-Musk Twitter eli…
Out from our team tonight. I'll say more about it tomorrow, but if you're interested in why the news environment on Twitter/X feels different during this crisis it has some answers for you. www.cip.uw.edu/2023/10/20/n...
According to @UW a “new elite” of influential but UNRELIABLE accounts, some of which have been promoted by Elon Musk, are dominating the flow of news on X around the Israel-Hamas. https://www.cip.uw.edu/... [image]
These graphics of Israel-Hamas posts really show what has happened. The bigger the circle, the more views a post got. Regular media (blue) dwarfed by the Musk-enabled shitflooders in yellow. Any traditional media still on Twitter is being suckered https://www.cip.uw.edu/... [imag…
New: A handful of influential but unreliable “breaking news” accounts, many promoted by Elon Musk, are dominating the flow of news on Twitter around the Israel-Hamas war and easily outpacing established mainstream news outlets, according to new research. https://www.nbcnews.com/.…
Ugh, this site's deterioration may be worse than we thought. “It's fast, it's unvetted, and it's very often unsourced. And there's every indication that the shift is not accidental and that it's part of a vision of what news is going to be on X.” https://www.nbcnews.com/...
Fantastic new rapid research from @holden and the team at the @UW Center for an Informed Public. What's up with these huge accounts pushing questionable news out of the #IsraelHamasWar? https://www.cip.uw.edu/...
7 influential accounts are warping Israel-Hamas news on X researchers branded 7 high-performing X accounts as “new elites"bc “disproportionate power and influence” —> Visegrád 24, news aggregator run by right-wing Polish social media marketing agency 🧵 https://www.nbcnews.com/...
Long story short: The recent accounts noting a change for the worse in the way news and information moves and is incentivized on Twitter aren't wrong. This is the news on Elon Musk's X now. As the lead author told me in a call: https://www.nbcnews.com/... [image]
The No. 7 most-viewed “news-focused” account on Twitter in the first three days after the Hamas terror attack was an account called “Censored Men.” https://www.cip.uw.edu/... [image]