The War in Israel Shows How Social Media’s Idealistic Era Has Ended

A little over a decade ago, a conflict in the Middle East showed the power of social media to keep global audiences informed about crises in real time. The way people used Facebook and Twitter during the uprisings known as the Arab Spring led to a surge of optimism about the important role these services could play for sharing information, organizing communities and even spreading democracy. For their part, tech companies leaned into that purpose, even as it became obvious that their platforms could be manipulated in ways that undermined it. Now another conflict in the Middle East is showing that the social media industry no longer sees that high-minded vision as part of its core mission.

In the hours after Hamas launched a large-scale attack on Israel over the weekend, people who turned to X, as Twitter is now known, were deluged with irrelevant or misleading reports, putting the consequences of Elon Musk’s loosening of content moderation rules on full display. Blue-check-mark accounts shared images of past conflicts, passing them off as new for commercial or political reasons. Some posts showed supposed military footage that actually originated from video games. Under Musk, X made it more difficult for users to assess the information they find in their feeds by making account verification available only through a paid subscription. More recently, it’s hidden X’s links and just shows users a picture from the landing page, with no preview headline.