Social media has been awash with false claims, conspiracy theories and hateful content surrounding what's happening in Israel and Gaza - and questions over whether inauthentic accounts are being used to manipulate the conversation.When I opened up my TikTok For You Page earlier this week, I was met with a video showing a young Israeli woman being taken hostage by Hamas fighters on 7 October. The footage was shocking.
All of these claims were not just shocking to me - they affect the wider understanding of what's happening. That includes sharing old videos from different wars and footage from video games, which the accounts claim is from the current situation in Israel and Gaza. In the past, both the Israeli government and Hamas militants have faced accusations of trying to distort online narratives with "bot" networks - inauthentic accounts used to repeatedly push divisive or misleading ideas.
Ultimately, though, determining whether a profile is actually fake and who exactly is behind it is a very difficult task. It requires information from the social media companies that journalists don't often have access to.
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