Truth is the first casualty in war. While the nature of conflicts keeps evolving, the accuracy of this military maxim has stood the test of time. In the past, the sources of propaganda and misinformation were limited — newspaper, radio and TV — but since social media, the cesspool of misinformation has been murkier than ever.

Like the conflicts before it, the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct 7 and the subsequent bombing by Israeli forces in Gaza led to a barrage of misinformation on social media, particularly X, formerly known as Twitter.

Some examples of these claims are the alleged beheading of babies by Hamas attackers, the use of “crisis actors” to show casualties, the publication of AI-generated images to show explosions and air strikes and the posting of visuals from past conflicts — all of which has been posted repeatedly despite multiple fact-checks.

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