While Elon Musk recommends sending around X posts so people can "learn the truth", here's a thread of viral misinformation on X about Hurricane Milton.

Alex Jones baselessly claims hurricanes Milton and Helene were deliberately started by the US government as "weather weapons".

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1843538784325083265

This post by one of X's most prominent conspiracy theorists, viewed 4.8 million times, suggests without any evidence that Hurricane Milton is a result of geo-engineering.

A Russia-based disinformation network run by a former Florida cop has published a new fabricated story on a fake news website called "Seattle Tribune".

It baselessly claims Ukrainain President Zelensky has secretly purchased a Mercedes 770 used by Hitler. It's nonsense.

https://twitter.com/Shayan86/status/1808308436477923676

The story refers to this doctored picture of a Mercedes 770 near the presidential office in Kyiv, posted on Telegram.

But that Telegram channel has never posted the pic, and the Mercedes in it has been lifted from the image on the right. Note the same reflections on both cars.

Thread: A viral story claims Kamala Harris was involved in a 2011 hit-and-run that left a 13-year-old named Alicia Brown paralyzed.

But the story is fake, and is most likely part of a pro-Kremlin disinformation operation run by an ex-Florida cop we've previously reported on.

https://twitter.com/Shayan86/status/1808308436477923676

The source of the story is an obscure website called KBSF-San Francisco News. The domain was set up on 20 August.

The website has all the hallmarks of a network of AI-powered fake news websites set up by Moscow-based former Florida cop John Mark Dougan.

Immediately after the Southport attack, baseless rumours began spreading online.

The main source of rumours has been a report by an obscure US "news" website that falsely claims the suspect is an "asylum seeker" named "Ali Al-Shakati", who "arrived in the UK by boat last year". Merseyside Police has confirmed that the suspect was born in Cardiff, and has yet to identify the 17-year-old.

The report also adds that the suspect was "on MI6 watch list", despite the fact that it is MI5, not MI6, that deals with domestic counter-terrorism cases.

THREAD: Fact-checking the Trump-Biden CNN debate

Trump said that Biden "inherited no inflation" when he came into office.

Inflation stood at 1.4% in January 2021. It rose significantly during Biden's presidency, hitting a peak of 9.1% in 2022. It was 3.3% in May. Biden claimed he's the only president in the last decade who doesn’t have "any troops dying anywhere in the world".

Three US troops were killed in a drone attack in Jordan in January.

During the Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021, 13 US troops were killed in a suicide attack.

Thread: Baltimore Bridge collapse misinformation

Pro-Kremlin influencers claim the captain of the Dali ship is a Ukrainian.

But online records show a Ukrainian man was the Dali's captain from March to July 2016. The ship that hit the bridge reportedly had an all-Indian crew.





Claims by influencers such as Alex Jones and Andrew Tate that the Baltimore Bridge collapsed due to a "cyber-attack" have been viewed millions of times.

Maryland Governor Wes Moore has said the early investigation points to an accident, with "no evidence of a terrorist attack".

DC Weekly, a website founded by a former US Marine now living in Russia, has fuelled disinformation stories about Zelensky and Ukraine, including a fake story that he bought two luxury yachts with US aid money, later repeated by some members of Congress.

bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-… These are just a few of the disinformation stories published by DC Weekly about Zelensky and Ukraine recently.

They all follow the same pattern: an obscure YouTube video featuring false claims, an article on DC Weekly referring to that video, and viral posts on social media.

A vast Russian influence operation on TikTok involving 12,800 fake accounts spreading disinformation about the war in Ukraine to millions of users in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Israel and Ukraine, has been uncovered by BBC Verify and @DFRLab.

bbc.co.uk/news/world-eur… Back in the summer, this video, featuing an AI-generated voice, racked up millions of views on TikTok and later on Twitter.

It falsely accused Ukraine's former defence minister Oleksiy Reznikov and his daughter Anastasiya Shteinhauz of buying a a €7m villa in Cannes, France.

The meme shared by Elon Musk about the pizzagate conspiracy theory is itself based on the completely false claim that James Gordon Meek, a journalist who recently pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography, had debunked pizzagate. Meek never reported on pizzagate.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1729511790638145918

The completely false claim that James Gordon Meek had debunked pizzagate was spread back in the summer by QAnon followers, like this blue tick account.

The New York Post has never published such a story about Meek. It's a totally fake image and a made up headline.

Thread: Israel-Hamas war misinformation - Day 45

This video, viewed over 3 million times, claims to show an Israeli settler run over protesters.

The video's from 9 September, during a protest in Tel Aviv against the government's judicial reforms, and involves no settlers.



This video claims to show two "terrorist" Palestinian journalists reporting near a rocket launcher.

The two are in fact Syrian journalists and the video is from 7 October. They reported retaliatory strikes against the Syrian government, after it killed 65 civilians in Idlib.

Thread: Israel-Hamas war misinformation - Day 40

Hannah Abutbul, an Israeli influencer, is being falsely doxxed as the woman in the misleading video of a supposed nurse at Al-Shifa hospital speaking out against Hamas.

I spoke to Hannah earlier. She's not the woman in the video.



This digitally altered video, viewed 13 million times, falsely claims to show an advertising in New York in which "support Ukraine" is replaced by "support Israel".

No such ad exists. The real ad right now is about the upcoming Trolls film, via @macrinawang @RitornellaNYC.

Thread: Israel-Hamas war misinformation - Day 37

A digitally altered image of Israeli actress Gal Gadot holding a sign against Zionism has been viewed a million times.

The original image shows her holding a "we remember" sign for Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2018.

This video, viewed over 7 million times, claims to show a nurse at Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital speak out against Hamas.

The woman in the video doesn't appear to have an accent from Gaza, the sound of explosions seems fake, and real staff at Al-Shifa don't seem to know her.

Thread: Israel-Hamas war misinformation - Day 34

Claims that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's psychiatrist has committed suicide have gone viral on Twitter, shared by David Icke and others.

The false claim is based on a satirical blog post dating back to 2010. It's not true.



This video, viewed 2 million times, claims to show a Hamas rocket kill "Israeli elite commandos".

The video is from the war in Syria, showing a rebel attack on Syrian government forces south of Aleppo in 2016.

Thread: Israel-Hamas war misinformation - Day 32

Jackson Hinkle claims the Lebanese Hezbollah has newly published this video of its anti-ship missiles in reaction to US aircraft carriers in eastern Mediterranean.

The video was first published in August 2019. It's not current.

This graphic image doesn't show the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre.

This is a photo of the bodies of prisoners killed by the Nazis at the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in Nordhausen, taken after its liberation by US troops in 1945.

Thread: Israel-Hamas war misinformation - Day 31

This video is being widely shared with claims it shows body bags of Palestinian children lined up on a street.

But it's from Saturday's pro-Palestinian rally in Washington DC, and the body bags are symbolic, not real.

This video, viewed over a million times, falsely claims to show fake Palestinian body bags, with one supposedly dead man staring at the camera.

The video was filmed during a presentation at a Malaysian mosque and posted to TikTok in August.

Thread: Israel-Hamas war misinformation - Day 28

This video, viewed 1.3 million times, claims to show a Palestinian father trying to stop Israeli soldiers from "abducting" his son.

The video is from 2015, and shows the arrest of a boy, 6, and an activist in the West Bank.

This video falsely claims to show Hamas's al-Qassam Brigades destroy an Israeli Merkava tank.

The video is from the war in Ukraine, and shows the destruction of a Russian T-90M tank.

Thread: Israel-Hamas war misinformation - Day 23

A deepfake video of US model Bella Hadid, in which she apologises for her "past remarks" about Israel, has been viewed millions of times.

The deepfake is a manipulated version of Hadid's remarks at a 2016 lyme alliance ceremony.

This video, viewed 400,000 times, falsely claims to show a huge pro-Palestinian rally in France.

In fact, the video shows fans of Brazilian football club Palmeiras near the Allianz Parque stadium in Sao Paulo on 5 October.

Thread: This viral video has been viewed millions of times in the last week.

It claims the Palestinian women in the two videos are the same "crisis actors" appearing as Hamas fans in one clip and civilian victims in another.

@O_Rob1nson and I tried to find out if that's true. We first need to find the original sources of those clips, preferably in higher resolution, to learn about the dates they were filmed at, their location, and full context.

We found a high-res copy of the top video on Telegram, posted on 28 September.

Thread: Israel-Hamas war misinformation - Day 23

This video, using the term "Pallywood", claims to show Palestinians faking injuries and deaths for cameras.

In fact, the video shows the filming of a zombie-themed ad in Algeria, posted to TikTok by the director in August.

This video claims to show "Hamas supporters" attack the Israeli consulate in Istanbul with fireworks.

The original version was posted to Instagram in May, showing supporters of President Erdogan celebrate his election win.

Thread: Israel-Hamas war misinformation - Day 22

Plenty of genuine images documenting the destruction in Gaza have been published since the conflict began.

This, however, isn't one of them. This is an AI-generated image that's been viewed millions of times today. Upon the expansion of Israel's ground operation, this video is being widely shared as strikes in Gaza tonight.

The video is from 2021 in Yemen, and has nothing to do with this conflict; fact-checked by @no_itsmyturn and @Info_Rosalie.

This image has gone viral in pro-Isreal circles, claiming to show a fake Palestinian corpse caught texting on his phone.

Let's go through the image verification process step-by-step, using Google's reverse image search.

Where does the photo come from and what's the context? On the Google homepage, click or tap on the camera logo on the right.

Either paste the URL of the post that features the image into the box, or save the image on your device and then upload it yourself.

I usually prefer to save and upload.