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.

Thread: Israel-Hamas war misinformation - Day 21

This video, falsely claiming to show a Palestinian "crisis actor" seriously injured one day and fine the next has been viewed tens of millions of times.

Those are two different men, and the hospital video is from August.





See how many millions of views this totally false claim has got. It was also tweeted by the official Israel account.

One is Saleh Aljafarawi from Gaza who can be found on Instagram, and the other is Mohammed Zendiq, 16, from the West Bank, who lost his leg at a hospital in July.

Thread: Online misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict - Day 17

This video, viewed 1.3 million times, is not related to the Israel-Hamas war.

It's a clip from the military simulation game Arma 3, as the Community Note underneath suggests.

This image, viewed 250,000 times, claims to show temporary tents set up for displaced Israelis during the war.

It's an AI-generated image. It's not real.

Thread: Online misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict - Day 9

This video, viewed 450,000 times, falsely claims to show Syria's Aleppo airport hit by Israeli missiles.

But the video isn't current, and was posted to Facebook in August; fact-checked by @AuroraIntel.

This video, viewed a million times, claims to show an aid convoy being stopped from going into Gaza.

But the video is from May 2021, during the last Israel-Hamas conflict, and shows an Egyptian aid convoy heading towards Gaza.

H/T @EekadFacts @Jay_Beecher

Thread: Online misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict - Day 8

This video, viewed 340,000 times, falsely claims to show Palestinians faking their inuries.

It's taken from a 2017 @trtworld report on a makeup artist doing work for Palestinian films and charity projects.

This video falsely claims to show Egyptians crossing the border with Gaza to deliver food and water.

The video was posted to TikTok in August, before the current Israel-Hamas conflict, and likely filmed near the Egypt-Libya border.

Thread: Online misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict - Day 6

This video, viewed 830,000 times, claims to show a US military plane carrying weapons landing in Israel.

The video is from 2019, and shows a US Air Force C-5M Super Galaxy taking off from California.

This graphic video, viewed 470,000 times, faslely claims to show a Hamas paraglider getting electrocuted while attempting to land in Israel.

The incident happened in China and the video first appeared online in June.