Meanwhile, disinformation about the conflict in the Middle East continues to rage on the platform, driven primarily by verified accounts.

Yesterday evening, Xs Trust and Safety team, which is currently leaderless after Ella Irwin resigned in June, wrote on X that it had removed newly created Hamas-affiliated accounts and was working with the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), an industry body that helps coordinate content moderation across social media platforms, to try and prevent terrorist content from being distributed online.

The Safety teams statement also lauded the user-generated Community Notes system and said new accounts were being enrolled to address the flood of disinformation on the platform. The Safety team also revealed that it had removed several hundreds accounts for attempting to manipulate trending topics.

Since Musk took control of the platform just under a year ago, he has restructured it to encourage engagement over everything else. As a result, accounts that subscribe to X Premium now have a monetary incentive to post content that is engaging regardless of how truthful it is. This was highlighted clearly on yesterday night when, at the same time as the Safety team posted its update, a new viral piece of disinformation was spreading unchecked on X.

Sulaiman Ahmed, a self-described investigative journalist, posted the false claim that the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City, one of the oldest churches in the world, was destroyed by an Israeli bomb. The post received over 1 million views in the span of three hours.

Ahmed is a subscriber to X Premium, which means his posts are given priority in search results and newsfeeds over other users, and he also allows followers to subscribe to his content directly through X, allowing him to profit from increased engagement with his content.

Yesterday evening, the church posted an update on Facebook dismissing the claim, adding that it was taking in refugees left homeless following Israels bombing campaign in retaliation to the Hamas attack that began on Saturday morning.

Despite the churchs rebuttaland Ahmed himself subsequently admitting that the church was untouchedthe disinformation spread far and wide on X. WIRED conducted a search for the Saint Porphyrius Orthodox Church on X this morning and found that Ahmeds original false post was the third result. Multiple other posts from verified users all repeating the lie were also promoted at the top of the results, none of which had Community Notes attached to them.

Eliot Higgins, founder of investigative journalist outlet Bellingcat, pointed out that the false information was being shared by a wide variety of accounts, all of which had one thing in common: a subscription to X Premium.

If Musk hadn't made it so hard to research disinformation on his website, this case would be a good way to show the growing overlap of the pro-Assad, the pro-Putin, and the US alt-right griftospheres, Higgins wrote on X, adding: Musk hasn't given the voiceless a voice, he's just dragged us all down into the swamp, and the only people who truly benefit are shameless grifters.

Read more:

Elon Musk Is Personally Undermining Xs Efforts to Curb Israel-Hamas War Disinformation - WIRED