Category: Fact Check

Hours after federal filings showed entrepreneur Elon Musk offered about $43 billion to buy Twitter, Musk told a Vancouver TED Talk audience about his vision for the social media platform.

“My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization,” Musk said April 14, 2022.

Musk closed the Twitter deal Oct. 27, 2022, for $44 billion. A year into Musk’s ownership, however, experts say the platform formerly known as Twitter has, through its practices, eroded trust and fanned misinformation. It disabled features that helped users avoid being duped by false information and established new systems that promote confusion and encourage the spread of false claims.

Musk personally has sown misinformation, too. The day after Hamas militants invaded Israel Oct. 7, killing more than a thousand people, Musk directed his millions of followers to two accounts that he described as “good” sources for “real-time” information about the war — both known for publishing unverified stories and false accounts. Musk later took down the tweet, but it had been seen 11 million times. Three days later, he posted a laughing emoji on a post that falsely suggested CNN had faked an attack in Israel.

That the anniversary of Musk’s acquisition coincides with the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war provides a real-time snapshot of the platform’s health. Pre-Musk Twitter was hardly a panacea in the world of truth-trading. And the flood of Israel-Hamas war misinformation on X — the new name Musk gave Twitter in late July — isn’t unique to this violence or unprecedented on social media.

But taken together, experts told PolitiFact that the changes Musk has ushered in — sometimes erratically and based on the outcomes of user polls — have worsened the information ecosystem on a platform once revered as a go-to place for breaking news. 

“Under Elon Musk’s ownership, misinformers are emboldened and lent an air of legitimacy,” said Jack Brewster, enterprise editor with NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation. “Rather than achieving the goal of leveling the playing field, Musk’s alterations, which include a major overhaul of the platform’s verification system and a reduction in content moderation, have instead fostered an environment in which bad actors can flourish.”

When PolitiFact contacted X for comment about this story, we received an auto-reply that said, “Busy now, please check back later.”

A sign with removed characters is seen July 24, 2023, on the Twitter headquarters building in San Francisco. (AP)

Research shows rising misinformation, hate speech on X, even with limited data

Analysts have documented some notable shifts on the platform since Musk took over:

• The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab found in October that a network of pro-Saudi Arabia Twitter accounts were coordinating in an apparent attempt to persuade Musk to reinstate the account of a banned user who, according to reports, helped orchestrate the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist who was critical of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince.

• The numbers of tweets containing slurs have spiked, as has the volume of engagement with those tweets, the Center for Countering Digital Hate reported in December 2022. The Center analyzed the number of tweets containing certain slurs on an average day in 2022 — from Jan. 1 to Oct. 27, 2022 — and compared it with the average number of daily tweets containing those slurs from Musk’s Oct. 28 takeover to Nov. 29, 2022. The Center found that depending on the word, the average number of daily posts using slurs shot up between 33% to 202%. Musk has since sued the group, accusing it of a “scare campaign to drive away advertisers from the X platform.” The case is ongoing.  

• Russian, Chinese and Iranian state media outlets known for spreading disinformation gained followers on Twitter, the Digital Forensic Research Lab reported in April. Its analysis relied on data from Meltwater Explore, a social media monitoring platform, to analyze Twitter data from Jan. 1 to April 19 for accounts labeled “state-affiliated.” Twitter under Musk took deliberate steps to stop reducing the reach of accounts from such state-sponsored sources, NPR reported.

• In the 90 days after April 21, when X removed labels identifying content from state-affiliated accounts, Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state media English-language accounts surged 70% compared with the previous 90-day period, NewsGuard found. 

But X itself has thwarted researchers’ efforts to analyze critical trends, despite Musk’s stance that its policy is to keep things “open source and transparent.” In February, the platform started charging cost-prohibitive fees of $42,000 to $210,000 per month for limited access to Twitter’s application programming interface, or API. The interface gives third-party researchers access to data they can analyze to better understand how information spreads. Researchers have used such data to learn more about social media’s role in election misinformation spread, democracy, COVID-19 discourse and social justice advocacy.

There is also a $100 per month API access option, but researchers say the data it provides is far too limited. The board for the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, a group of academics, journalists, civil society researchers and community scientists interested in advancing research on technology’s impact on society, criticized the changes. It said that prior API availability gave researchers low-cost access to real-time data on 10% of all tweets while even the most expensive tier under Musk’s new plan would cut access by 80% and cost 400 times more.

“Twitter’s new system to monetize and dramatically restrict access to its API will render this research and development impossible,” the coalition wrote in an open letter April 3. “Unless they can pay, researchers will not be able to collect any tweets at all.”

Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, said, “The tools that researchers would generally use to answer a question like ‘is there more or less misinformation’ have been taken away.” 

As European Union regulators crack down on social media misinformation and hate speech, Musk has signaled little interest in cooperating. Under his leadership, Twitter withdrew from the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation, a unique set of voluntary commitments social media platforms made to research and fight disinformation.

Twitter leaves EU voluntary Code of Practice against disinformation.

But obligations remain. You can run but you can’t hide.

Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be legal obligation under #DSA as of August 25.

Our teams will be ready for enforcement.

— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) May 26, 2023

Before Musk pulled out, however, TrustLab, a company commissioned by the social media platforms in response to that agreement, accessed X’s data on the platforms in three EU countries. 

TrustLab’s September report analyzing the prevalence and sources of disinformation on social media found that mis- and disinformation discoverability — a measure of how easily a platform surfaces mis- and disinformation for users searching certain keywords — is highest on X compared with Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. Mis- and disinformation content on X received more engagement than other content, and X had the largest “ratio of disinformation actors,” which refers “to the proportion of disinformation actors relative to the total accounts sampled on a platform.” The analysis included samples from May to June 2023. 

TrustLab co-founder and CEO Tom Siegel said that compared with other platforms, this data snapshot showed misinformation is the worst on Musk’s platform. “Has it always been that way? Has it recently spiked particularly when the governance change started happening?” Siegel said, reflecting on this data set. “I can’t say that with certainty.”

Musk has also appeared to resist other efforts in the EU to discourage bad actors from sharing false information.

When EU Commissioner Thierry Breton posted on X an Oct. 10 open letter, calling on Musk to enforce rules of the new Digital Services Act and moderate and remove violent and terrorist content, Musk responded by asking him to list the violations on X so “the public can see them.”

Breton was unmoved. “You are well aware of your users’ — and authorities’— reports on fake content and glorification of violence,” he responded.

The transformation of the blue check mark: How an $8 subscription fee buys favor with the platform’s algorithm

Twitter’s blue check mark was a once-coveted indicator that an account holder’s identity was authentic, “verified.”

On X, paid users reign supreme. 

Under Musk’s changes — initially called “Twitter Blue” but now called “X Premium” — anyone can buy a blue check mark for $8 a month or $84 a year, guaranteeing that their posts, no matter the content, will be prioritized by X’s algorithm. 

Rampant impersonation followed Twitter Blue’s launch Nov. 9. An account impersonating the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. and carrying a blue check mark falsely tweeted, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now,” triggering a drop in Eli Lilly’s stock price.

A day later, Twitter paused the program. When it relaunched in December, it included some safeguards to prevent impersonation. Then, in late March 2023, Musk announced that only subscribers’ tweets would be recommended on the “For You” page — the default feed users see when opening the platform. 

The result is that people are exposed to mis- and disinformation shared by accounts they don’t follow and previously might not have seen, said Nick Reiners, senior analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. 

These changes were among the most influential to the proliferation of misinformation on X, experts told us. 

News organizations, including PolitiFact, were also stripped of the verified blue checks that afforded credibility and warded off impersonators — unless they paid a monthly business subscription fee of $1,000, which would secure them a gold check mark.

So, verifiable news became harder to find as less-trusted sources were empowered to thrive. “The easiest way to get distribution is to buy it,” Siegel said. That means people who want to spread scams or low-quality information online have a cheap and convenient way to do so.

McKenzie Sadeghi, a NewsGuard senior analyst, said the change gave misinformers willing to pay “an air of legitimacy.”

Workers install lighting on an “X” sign atop the company headquarters, formerly known as Twitter, on July 28, 2023, in San Francisco. (AP)

Viral posts have become profitable

Bad information has click-appeal; it is often designed to trigger an emotional response, said Kolina Koltai, a former Twitter contractor now with Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based digital investigative journalism group.

So, in mid-July, when X began sharing ad revenue with its largest content creators who also pay for blue check marks, it compounded the platform’s misinformation problem, experts said.

Now, blue check mark subscribers can earn a profit when people interact with their content. It is unclear how an account becomes eligible for payouts, or how the payments are calculated.

The first round of payments to creators totaled $5 million, according to Musk. Those payments went largely to right-wing influencers, with people such as Andrew Tate, Ian Miles Cheong and Benny Johnson each tweeting that they’d received payments of about $10,000 or more. 

X’s revenue sharing policy introduced “an additional incentive for posting viral low-quality content,” said Boston University professor Gianluca Stringhini, who researches malicious activity on the internet.

Researchers have already started to document this incentive’s impact.

From Oct. 7 to Oct. 14, the Israel-Hamas war’s first week, NewsGuard analyzed “the 250 most-engaged posts” that promoted one of 10 prominent false or unsubstantiated war narratives identified by NewsGuard and found that 186 of the posts were shared by X subscribers with blue checks. Such narratives included the false claims that CNN staged an attack in Israel and that a White House memo showed the U.S. approved $8 billion in aid for Israel. 

This means 74% “of the most viral posts on X advancing misinformation about the Israel-Hamas War” were pushed by paid X users, NewsGuard found. 

While amplifying falsehoods, Musk has replatformed misinformers 

Musk himself shares false and misleading narratives and has used his position to promote accounts of known misinformers. 

On Oct. 30, 2022, three days after closing his Twitter purchase, Musk tweeted a link from a site known to spread misinformation that fueled an unsubstantiated narrative about the attack on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi. Musk later deleted the tweet. 

Musk restored accounts for thousands of users who were once banned from Twitter for misconduct such as posting violent threats, harassment or spreading misinformation. 

On Nov. 19, less than a month after taking over the platform, Musk restored former President Donald Trump’s account after holding a poll that asked users whether he should. Trump had been banned since Jan. 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob attacked the U.S. Capitol. 

On Nov. 23, Musk asked users whether the platform should “offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.” After 72% of respondents voted “yes,” Musk said he would implement such a policy.

In November 2022, Elon Musk polled users to help him decide whether to reinstate accounts that had been suspended before he took over the platform. (Screenshot from X)

It appears these reinstated accounts drive profit for X.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate in February analyzed publicly available data on tweet impressions for 10 reinstated accounts it described as “renowned for publishing hateful content and dangerous conspiracies.” By its estimates, the platform stood to make more than $19 million per year in ad revenue from the 10 accounts, most of which appeared to have paid for blue check marks. 

X’s Help Center says it addresses misinformation. But its policies are not clear.

The Help Center says the actions it takes on misinformation are “meant to be proportionate to the level of potential harm from that situation” and warns that people who repeatedly violate the platform’s policies “may be subject to temporary suspensions.” 

It also says it limits amplification of misleading content or removes it “if offline consequences could be immediate and severe.” But it does not explain what content would qualify. 

Before Musk, repeated violations of Twitter’s policies prohibiting the spread of COVID-19 and election misinformation could result in permanent bans, CNN reported. 

About a month after Musk’s takeover, the platform said it would no longer enforce its COVID-19 misinformation policy. The platform’s written policy on election misinformation says the platform can label or deamplify posts that confuse users about their ability to vote, including incorrect information about polling times or locations, PolitiFact reported. But PolitiFact has reported that the policy’s enforcement is inconsistent.

Siegel said that judging by the X content that freely spreads unchecked, it appears X has become more permissive about what people can say on the platform before facing penalties. That reflects a shift in values within X’s leadership. 

“It’s just really deciding what, as a platform, do you allow and not allow, according to your own values?” Siegel said. “They’re just extremely biased toward freedom of speech and not interfering with people’s rights to post content.”

Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” has repeatedly said that he promotes free speech to the extent that it is legal. 

“I don’t know what’s going on with every part of this platform all the time, but our policy worldwide is to fight for maximum freedom of speech under the law,” Musk wrote Sept. 17. “Anyone working for X Corp who does not operate according to this principle will be invited to further their career at any one of the other social media companies who sell their soul for a buck.”

At times, however, Musk has flip-flopped on his free speech stance. He said he would not ban an account that was following his plane, and then he did ban it.

Musk’s changes made vetted, independent news harder to find

Gone are many features people once used to more successfully navigate the platform’s information environment.

In April, Musk’s platform removed labels that told users when accounts were state-affiliated or government-funded and stopped reducing their reach. Users no longer know of an account’s government ties, unless they have previous knowledge of that entity or conduct their own research, Sadeghi said.

Screenshots of a May 18, 2022, Tehran Times post show that although Twitter once displayed a “state-affiliated media” label the accounts’ posts, that label no longer appears on X. (Images courtesy of NewsGuard)

As a result of Musk’s 2022 layoffs, experts say the platform has little to no staff dedicated to content moderation or fostering trust and safety.

Reiners said the changes to how accounts obtain check marks undermined news organizations by making it harder to identify authentic news organizations’ accounts.

Russian state-sponsored media organization, RT, for example, now shows the paid gold check mark badge but no longer includes the label alerting readers that it’s state-sponsored. Some local news organizations have check mark accounts; others do not. In the case of The New York Times, it appears X freely gave the gold badge and then took it away.

In a recent update, X also stopped displaying headline text when news outlets share links to stories, making news content harder to recognize — a change Reiners called “baffling.”

Musk’s displeasure with the press has seemed apparent in other decisions, too.  

On Dec. 15, Musk abruptly banned from Twitter several journalists, including from The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN, who had reported on a platform rule change that led to the suspension of @ElonJet, an account that tracked the location of Musk’s private jet. Musk claimed without evidence that the journalists had violated an anti-doxxing policy by sharing his precise, real-time location. 

Facing backlash, Musk again polled platform users. A majority of voters supported reinstating the journalists, and Musk reinstated most of the accounts by Dec. 18. 

In August, The Washington Post reported that X deliberately slowed users’ access to links directing people to news organizations and other social media platforms, including The New York Times, Reuters and Facebook.

Crowd-sourced fact-checking via Community Notes is not enough, experts say

X touted its Community Notes program — the platform’s crowdsourced approach to addressing misinformation — as one way to combat Israel-Hamas war misinformation. The program allows certain users to submit context to tweets that might be otherwise misleading.

“In one week we’ve added 10,000 new authors and simultaneously rolled out new enhancements to help people see more notes, faster,” X’s CEO Linda Yaccarino posted Oct. 16. 

On Oct. 17, the Community Notes account said it would require people to include sources for proposed notes. Musk responded: “Links to actual source data, not some bs press article, are what matter. Many legacy media organizations have no business model or meaningful circulation anymore — they just exist as propaganda tools for their owners.”

Experts described Community Notes as innovative, but they cautioned that the feature is imperfect and not enough to single-handedly combat misinformation on X. 

Using “the wisdom of crowds” to inform rather than having platform moderators decide what people can or cannot see is one way to promote freedom of speech while providing context, said Siegel. 

For example: In June, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis falsely claimed that the Los Angeles Dodgers’ decision to recognize an LGBTQ+ group during a Pride Night event resulted in photos of “a virtually empty stadium” for the game, and his post received a Community Note. “The photo was taken an hour before the opening pitch,” it read. “The Dodgers reported attendance for June 16 was 49,074.”

The downside is that forms can get spammed, and Community Notes can contain inaccurate information or lack crucial context. 

Community Notes volunteers have expressed frustration at how long it has taken for notes to appear on posts containing misinformation since the Israel-Hamas war started. Community Notes must be accepted by a consensus of people from across the political spectrum, so they can be slow to publicly appear. And many notes on polarizing subject matters will never become public at all; sometimes, they disappear.

NewsGuard found that Community Notes appeared on 79 of the 250 posts the group analyzed that shared misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war — or 31.6% of the time.

Koltai, who researched Community Notes for Twitter, said the initiative was not meant to be the platform’s only approach to addressing misinformation. 

Siegel said, “Anytime you have a free-form feature that allows for community action and interaction, it just has a lot of potential to introduce a lot of noise.”

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.  

RELATED: Amid images and news of actual war, false and misleading claims about Israel-Hamas thrive

RELATED: Elon Musk said he wouldn’t ban the Twitter account tracking his jet. Weeks later, he suspended it

Did West Virginia have its best tourism year ever in 2022, as Gov. Jim Justice said recently? 

In a Sept. 12 post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Justice, a Republican, said, “2022 was the biggest tourism year ever in West Virginia, and the numbers are absolutely incredible.”

The governor’s office and the West Virginia Tourism Board’s press office did not respond to inquiries from PolitiFact West Virginia about Justice’s statement. 

However, we looked through data archived on the board’s website, going back to 2000. We found that Justice is right by some metrics, but not others.

The clearest evidence supporting Justice’s statement is traveler spending in the state. 

For 2022, the last year with full available data, travelers spent $4.9 billion in West Virginia. That’s up 2.1% from $4.8 billion in 2021, and slightly higher than the previous record, of a bit over $4.8 billion, set in 2012.

However, two other West Virginia Tourism Board metrics did not set records in 2022.

Tourism-supported jobs in the state fell 7.2% from 47,600 in 2021 to 44,400 in 2022. The 2022 level marked the lowest number since 2007.

And tax revenue from tourism fell 4.7%, from $791 million in 2021 to $754 million in 2022.

 

Our ruling

Justice said, “2022 was the biggest tourism year ever in West Virginia.” 

Spending by travelers to West Virginia set a record in 2022. However, tourism-supported jobs fell to its lowest level since 2007, and tax revenue from tourism fell slightly from 2021 levels.

We rate the statement Half True.

Un video en Facebook dice que Joe Biden advirtió sobre un ataque de Corea del Norte contra Estados Unidos similar al de Hamas contra Israel, pero esto no pasó. 

Biden “advirtió esta mañana que Corea del Norte podría estar preparando un ataque parecido al Hamas en Israel pero este sería en suelo americano”, dice una publicación del 15 de octubre. 

La publicación fue marcada como parte del esfuerzo de Meta para combatir las noticias falsas y la desinformación en su plataforma. (Lea más sobre nuestra colaboración con Meta, propietaria de Facebook e Instagram).

PolitiFact no encontró discursos de Biden ni publicaciones de él en redes sociales afirmando lo que dice el video en Facebook. Tampoco encontramos reportes verídicos de la Casa Blanca o de medios de comunicación legítimos sobre el tema. 

El Ministro de Defensa de Corea del Sur, Shin Won-sik, dijo el 10 de octubre que iba a tratar de suspender un acuerdo militar inter-coreano del 2018, debido a preocupaciones de que Corea del Norte ataque el sur de manera semejante al ataque de Hamas a Israel, según The Associated Press. El acuerdo creó zonas de amortiguamiento a lo largo de las fronteras terrestres, marítimas y zonas de exclusión aérea sobre la frontera para evitar enfrentamientos. 

El portaaviones estadounidense USS Ronald Reagan llegó a Corea del Sur el 12 de octubre para reforzar las alianzas de la naviera estadounidense con el país. Esta visita no fue en preparación para un posible ataque de Corea del Norte contra los Estados Unidos. 

Biden advirtió en abril a Corea del Norte que cualquier ataque nuclear en contra de Corea del Sur o sus aliados podría tener una respuesta abrumadora, según NPR. Pero no hay reportes de un posible ataque a Estados Unidos. 

Nuestro veredicto

Un video en Facebook dice que Biden advirtió el 15 de octubre “que Corea del Norte podría estar preparando un ataque parecido al Hamas en Israel pero este sería en suelo americano”.

PolitiFact no encontró ningún discurso o reporte verídico sobre el tema. En vez, esta preocupación vino de parte de Corea del Sur.

Calificamos la declaración de que Biden advirtió sobre un ataque de Corea del Norte contra Estados Unidos como Falsa. 

Lea más reportes de PolitiFact en Español aquí.

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Debido a limitaciones técnicas, partes de nuestra página web aparecen en inglés. Estamos trabajando en mejorar la presentación.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his campaign have accused competitor Nikki Haley, his Republican presidential nomination competitor, of laying the welcome mat for Gaza refugees.

“Nikki Haley argues in support of bringing Gaza refugees to America,” the pro-DeSantis PAC Never Back Down posted Oct. 16 on X. 

The post showed a clip of Haley’s Oct. 15 interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. We watched the interview and found that Haley, former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, did not call for bringing refugees from Gaza to the United States.

The entire Republican primary field has said the U.S. should support Israel in the war with Hamas. But after Hamas, a Palestinian militant group, attacked Israel on Oct. 7, DeSantis distanced his position from Haley’s.

DeSantis has said he does not want the U.S. to take refugees from Gaza. But we found no evidence that Haley does, either.

Political spats aside, whether the U.S. accepts refugees from Gaza is hypothetical so far. Palestinians in Gaza generally couldn’t leave the area as of mid-October because it was sealed off, and even if they could, the U.S. process for granting refugee status is difficult and can take years.

Haley did not call for the U.S. to take in refugees from Gaza on CNN

Haley’s full interview showed she does not view all people in Gaza as Hamas supporters, but she did not say whether any refugees should come to the U.S.

“Do you think the U.S., Israel, Egypt needs to be doing more to help these innocent Palestinian civilians get out of harm’s way?” Tapper asked Haley.

“We should care about the Palestinian citizens, especially the innocent ones, because they didn’t ask for this,” Haley said during her response. “But where are the Arab countries? Where are they? Where is Qatar? Where is Lebanon? Where is Jordan? Where is Egypt? Do you know we give Egypt over a billion dollars a year? Why aren’t they opening the gates? Why aren’t they taking the Palestinians?

“You know why? Because they know they can’t vet them, and they don’t want Hamas in their neighborhood. So, why would Israel want them in their neighborhood? So, let’s be honest with what’s going on. The Arab countries aren’t doing anything to help the Palestinians because they don’t trust who is right, who is good, who is evil, and they don’t want it in their country.”

Tapper then asked Haley to listen to a clip of DeSantis on the campaign trail in Iowa,  discussing residents of Gaza.

“If you look at how they behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all antisemitic,” DeSantis said. “None of them believe in Israel’s right to exist.”

Tapper then cited polling from earlier this year that found that half of Palestinians in Gaza wanted Hamas to stop calling for Israel’s destruction and 70% wanted the Palestinian Authority from the West Bank to take over Gaza. Hamas, which the U.S. in 1997 designated a terrorist organization, won the Palestinian parliamentary election in 2006.

“So, I’m not really certain that Gov. DeSantis has a real read on the difference between Hamas and the people of Gaza,” Tapper said to Haley. “What was your response when you heard what Gov. DeSantis said?”

“I dealt with this every day for two years,” Haley said, referring to her tenure as U.N. ambassador in 2017 and 2018, during the Trump administration. 

Haley said half of the Palestinians in Gaza didn’t want to be under Hamas rule. 

“There are so many of these people who want to be free from this terrorist rule,” she said. “They want to be free from all of that. And America’s always been sympathetic to the fact that you can separate civilians from terrorists. And that’s what we have to do.”

Never Back Down argues that Haley’s statements signal that Haley wants to allow Palestinians in Gaza into the U.S. 

“Why would Haley emphasize America’s ability to ‘separate civilians from terrorists’ and say ‘That’s what we have to do’ if she was opposed to doing it?” Matt Wolking, a Never Back Down spokesperson told PolitiFact in a statement.

But that’s not what Haley said.

Haley later said she opposed taking refugees

PolitiFact’s process is to rate statements based on what was known when they’re made. But the DeSantis-Haley feud over this point continued for days after Never Back Down’s Oct. 16 post.

On Oct. 17, DeSantis told Fox News that Haley “was taking issue with what I said, saying that you can separate someone who’s Hamas in Gaza with somebody who’s more of a freedom lover. So, why would she be talking about that, ‘We can vet these people,’ if she wasn’t saying that they should come to this country? We would have no role in vetting them unless you’re bringing them to this country. And so, she changed her tune.”

But also Oct. 17, Haley told Fox News that the people in Gaza should stay within the region.

“We don’t know who they are,” Haley said. “Why doesn’t Egypt want them? For the same reason that we should not want them. It’s because you can’t vet them. You don’t know, but also I found out refugees want to stay within their region. So, let the Gazans stay within the region.”

Our ruling 

The Never Back Down PAC wrote Oct. 16 on X, “Nikki Haley argues in support of bringing Gaza refugees to America.”

The PAC’s post linked to a clip of Haley’s CNN interview in which she said many people in Gaza want to be free of terrorist rule. “America’s always been sympathetic to the fact that you can separate civilians from terrorists,” Haley said. “And that’s what we have to do.”

Her comment about distinguishing civilians from terrorists is not akin to inviting refugees from Gaza to enter the U.S. And when Tapper asked her whether the U.S. and other countries should help the civilians, Haley said we should care about “the innocent Palestinian citizens.” But she also asked why Arab countries were not taking in people from Gaza. The reason, she said, was that other countries “know they can’t vet them, and they don’t want Hamas in their neighborhood.”

Haley did not say in the interview whether the U.S. should accept refugees from Gaza.

We rate this statement False. 

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Social media users have warned that the Israel-Hamas war is leading to havoc, even on U.S. freeways.  

One Oct. 12 Instagram video described what looks like a silver car doing “doughnut” maneuvers and emitting smoke on the Long Island Expressway, disrupting the flow of traffic. (To do automotive doughnuts, drivers maneuver in tight circles, leaving circular skid marks.)

The caption read, “Right here, in New York, on the LIE. A car carrying men waving the Palestinian flag abruptly and dangerously stopping traffic to run ‘donuts’ causing a commotion and fear, distracting drivers and endangering lives!”

A similar video also gained thousands of views on TikTok. It claimed that the New York Police Department called in its police force expecting massive protests, after “protesters shut down the freeway in NYC.”

The video shows road signs for Throgs Neck Bridge, Long Island, and Exit 11 for Randall Avenue.

(Screenshot from Instagram)

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The text in the video was inaccurate.

The Instagram video featured the username “mjhealthandhome,” but that account is unavailable. 

A keyword search on X led to a video of the incident from another angle, posted Oct. 11 by WCBS-TV reporter Tim McNicholas, His video shows a clearer picture of what was being waved — the flag of Puerto Rico. ​

(Screenshot from Tim McNicholas’ X post)

The Palestinian flag has black, white, and green stripes and a red triangle, while the Puerto Rican flag has five alternating red and white stripes, a blue triangle and a white star.

McNicholas made another X post, saying, “I have been informed people are sharing this saying this happened on the Long Island Expressway and that’s a Palestinian flag they’re waving. It’s not the LIE, and it’s not a Palestinian flag.” He attached a screenshot of the flag being waved in the car.

We geolocated the site of the incident to the Cross Bronx Expressway. 

The video doesn’t show a car carrying men waving the Palestinian flag “dangerously” stopping traffic to run doughnuts in New York. We rate that claim False.

As nations around the world responded to the outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas, some social media users started circulating a video that they claimed showed North Korea leader Kim Jong Un blaming U.S. President Joe Biden for the war.

An Oct. 12 Instagram post features a video of Kim delivering a speech behind a lectern. Text at the start of the video claims it shows Kim’s speech about the Israel-Hamas war. He is speaking in Korean, but English captions were added. 

“Under the Biden administration, conflicts erupt yearly,” read the English captions as Kim speaks. “This year a war begins between Israel and Palestine. Last year a war begins between Russia and Ukraine. And two years ago, billions worth of military equipment was left to the Taliban. I’m afraid that if the Biden admin. Does not cease to exist in the next election, world war 3 may begin. Who knows what next year’s war will be. I support Donald Trump for President in 2024. Good Luck to Mr. Trump.”

This post and others were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.) We also found this video shared on TikTok.

(Screenshot from Instagram)

The English captions do not reflect what Kim said in his address.

A Google reverse image search revealed that Kim delivered this speech in October 2020, three years before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and more than a year before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. 

In the speech, made on Oct. 10, 2020, at a military parade, Kim warned he would “fully mobilize” North Korea’s nuclear force if it was threatened, Politico reported. Kim also tearfully thanked his people for overcoming burdens, including the coronavirus pandemic, and apologized for not satisfactorily preventing North Koreans from experiencing hardships, according to The Korea Times, an English-language South Korean newspaper. 

The BBC shared a clip that matched part of the video posted on Instagram, and reported that Kim said no one could appreciate North Korean troops’ “heroic devotion” without “shedding tears of gratitude.”  

The National Committee on North Korea — a U.S.-based organization that says it supports “principled engagement” between the U.S. and North Korea to promote peace on the Korean peninsula — published an English translation of Kim’s speech produced by the Korean Central News Agency, a North Korean state media outlet. 

PolitiFact cross-referenced that translation with quotes included by English news organizations, which largely corroborated its accuracy.

The translated version of Kim’s speech did not include the words, “Biden,” “Trump,” “Israel,” “Palestine,” “Russia,” “Ukraine,” or “Taliban.”

And although Kim mentioned that international sanctions had created challenges for North Koreans, he did not refer to the U.S. by name, Politico and CNN reported.

Our ruling

An Instagram video claimed to show a speech in which Kim blamed Biden for the Israel-Hamas war and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and said, “I support Donald Trump for President in 2024.”

A reverse image search revealed that speech was from Oct. 10, 2020. A translation and news reports about the speech’s content show that the English captions superimposed on the video are inaccurate. He did not mention Biden, Trump, Israel, Hamas, Russia or Ukraine.

We rate this claim False.

Las manifestaciones alrededor del mundo debido a la guerra entre Israel y Hamas no se han hecho esperar.   

Un video en Facebook afirma mostrar enfrentamientos entre un grupo de personas y la policía de Barcelona. “AHORA: Manifestantes pro palestinos y policías se enfrentaron en las calles de Barcelona, ​​España. Las protestas son parte de represalias después del bombardeo de un hospital en Gaza”, dice la publicación del 17 de octubre.

La publicación fue marcada como parte del esfuerzo de Meta para combatir las noticias falsas y la desinformación en su plataforma. (Lea más sobre nuestra colaboración con Meta, propietaria de Facebook e Instagram).

En Barcelona ha habido concentraciones pro palestina recientemente, pero estas imágenes no corresponden a estas manifestaciones.

El video es real, pero no actual, tal como dice la publicación. El video muestra los enfrentamientos entre la policía y los manifestantes en octubre de 2020, a raíz de una protesta contra las restricciones por la pandemia de COVID-19. 

Captura de pantalla del video que muestra una manifestación en octubre de 2020 contra de las medidas de restricciones por la pandemia de COVID-19 en Barcelona.

El video que está grabado desde un balcón, muestra a un grupo de personas que lanzan objetos contra vehículos de la policía catalana, conocida como Mossos d’Esquadra.

Poco después, más agentes llegan al lugar y se inicia una persecución de los protestantes por parte de las autoridades.

A través de una búsqueda en Google Street View, una función de Google Maps que permite ver la calle como si estuvieras caminando en ella, PolitiFact identificó diversos edificios de Via Laietana, la calle de Barcelona donde tuvieron lugar los enfrentamientos. Asimismo se identifican edificios concretos como la Oficina de Correos o el Instituto Nacional de Estadística.

La agencia de noticias Scarcity Studios, publicó el 1 de noviembre del 2020 en X, antes conocido como Twitter, las mismas imágenes del video de la publicación. Estas iban acompañadas de un mensaje que decía “Barcelona,Spain : Clashes with police over lockdown restrictions results in officers injured . police used motorbikes to chase down rioters tonight with several arrests made as large crowds gathered in other places in the city to protest #worldnews #spain #Barcelona“.

Otra publicación en X de una periodista especializada en sucesos del periódico español La Vanguardia, muestra las mismas imágenes grabadas desde otro ángulo. La publicación es del 31 de octubre de 2020. 

También hay imágenes del mismo enfrentamiento en otros medios españoles e internacionales que escribieron sobre el tema.

Los Mossos d’Esquadra no respondieron a la solicitud de comentarios. 

Nuestro veredicto

Un video dice, “AHORA: Manifestantes pro palestinos y policías se enfrentaron en las calles de Barcelona, ​​España. Las protestas son parte de represalias después del bombardeo de un hospital en Gaza”.

El video es real, pero no actual. Fue grabado en Barcelona durante manifestaciones en contra de las restricciones por la pandemia de COVID-19, en octubre de 2020.

Calificamos la publicación como Falsa. 

Lea más reportes de PolitiFact en Español aquí.

__________________________________________________________________________

Debido a limitaciones técnicas, partes de nuestra página web aparecen en inglés. Estamos trabajando en mejorar la presentación.

Editor’s note: This story contains references and links to graphic images and videos.

Footage of death and destruction in Israel and Gaza is plentiful, disturbing and all too real. At the same time, misinformation about the war has thrived.

There have been verified reports that Hamas, which attacked Israel on Oct. 7, committed violence against children. But one particularly disturbing claim — that the Palestinian militant group beheaded dozens of babies — gained prominence in the days after the massacre, amplified at the U.S. and Israeli governments’ highest levels. This report remains unverified.

Since the attack, the claim has been widely repeated by politicians including President Joe Biden, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.; news outlets, such as CNN, Fox News and the New York Post; Israeli officials, including the prime minister’s office; actor Noah Schnapp and other social media users with large followings.

The war’s devastation has intensified in subsequent days. The Associated Press reported Oct. 20 that in Gaza, Palestinian health authorities said at least 4,137 people have been killed and more than 13,200 injured — including more than 500 deaths in a hospital explosion. In Israel, at least 1,400 people have been killed and 4,500 injured as of Oct. 20. The death toll includes 32 Americans. And Hamas took more than 200 people hostage, NBC News reported.

The confirmed violence is horrible enough. So why did a weakly sourced claim about 40 beheaded babies travel far and wide?

Experts on disinformation and the Middle East pinpointed the emotional response elicited by violence against children, along with a lack of confirmation from official sources.

“Because it is such a shocking claim … it has garnered significant attention as well as attempts to support or rebut,” said Osamah Khalil, a Syracuse University history professor specializing in the modern Middle East and U.S. foreign policy.

PolitiFact examined the claim’s origin and documented how U.S. and Israeli politicians and media repeated it and walked it back.

Claim originates with a field report

The claim that Hamas beheaded 40 babies traces back to an Israeli reporter’s on-air comments.

On Oct. 10, three days after Hamas’ attack on Kibbutz Kfar Aza in southern Israel, the Israel Defense Forces, the nation’s military, allowed news outlets to report from the ravaged site. Reporter Nicole Zedeck of i24 News, an Israeli news channel, said Israeli soldiers told her infants had been killed in the attack.

“The Israeli military still says they don’t have a clear number (of the casualties), but I’m talking to some of the soldiers, and they say what they’ve witnessed is they’ve been walking through these different houses, these different communities — babies, their heads cut off. That’s what they said,” Zedeck said during her English-language broadcast from Kfar Aza.

Also Oct. 10, Zedeck posted on X that “one of the commanders told me they saw babies’ heads cut off.” Thirty-five minutes later, she posted again, saying “soldiers told me they believe 40 babies/children were killed.”

She did not say Hamas beheaded 40 babies, but several news outlets and social media posts conflated those reports.

On Oct. 11, United Kingdom news outlets ran headlines declaring that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies. Some American media outlets, including CNN, Fox News and the New York Post, repeated the claim that babies had been beheaded, citing Israeli media or the prime minister’s office as sources.

On Telegram on Oct. 11, Hamas dismissed “the false claims promoted by some Western media outlets, such as Palestinian freedom fighters killing children and targeting civilians,” without mentioning beheadings specifically.

Evidence disputed Hamas’ broad rebuttal, however: Women, children and older people were among the thousands killed or wounded in the militant group’s surprise attack, ABC News and The New York Times reported. Multiple news outlets have reported that women were among the people Hamas kidnapped.

The militant group “has repeatedly said that it does not intentionally target or kill women and children,” despite the overwhelming evidence contradicting this claim, Khalil said.

Israeli and U.S. officials repeated the claim, then gave it distance

Political leaders, first in Israel, then the U.S., gave the beheadings claim more credibility early on. But officials then amended their statements, which increased confusion.

On Oct. 11, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told CNN that babies and toddlers were found in Kfar Aza with their “heads decapitated.” The next morning, CNN reported that the Israeli government could not confirm the claim that Hamas beheaded babies, contradicting the prime minister’s office’s previous statement.

President Joe Biden also repeated the claim during an Oct. 11 roundtable with Jewish leaders, saying, “I never really thought that I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.”

But Biden had neither seen photos nor received confirmation that Hamas beheaded babies or children, the White House later told CNN. Biden was referring to public comments from media outlets and Israeli officials.

Biden was more careful in his Oct. 18 remarks in Israel: “Children slaughtered. Babies slaughtered. Entire families massacred. Rape, beheadings, bodies burned alive.”

Netanyahu said during Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Biden’s visits to Israel that Hamas beheaded people, but Netanyahu did not say whether the victims were infants.

The Israeli prime minister’s office shared Oct. 12 photos of babies it said were “murdered and burned” by Hamas. The post did not depict beheadings.

Blinken said he was shown documentation of “an infant riddled with bullets, soldiers beheaded, young people burned alive” during his Oct. 12 visit.

When asked about the authenticity of the images of dead children Netanyahu had shared, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Oct. 12, “I don’t think we’re in the business of having to validate or approve those kinds of images. They’re from the prime minister of Israel and we have no reason to doubt their authenticity.”

The i24 News reporter said the claim came from Israeli soldiers, but the Israel Defense Forces had not confirmed how many babies were killed or if any were beheaded. On Oct. 12, an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson told PolitiFact that the attack on Kfar Aza was “a massacre in which women, children, toddlers and elderly were brutally butchered in an ISIS way of action.” 

How the claim became so pervasive

The speed at which information was shared following Hamas’ attack vastly outpaced journalists’ and researchers’ ability to verify or raise questions about what happened.

“It’s all tied to the lack of certified trustworthy information,” said Dina Sadek, Mideast research fellow for the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “(It) lets people speculate and believe a lot of things that they’re seeing on the internet before waiting for official confirmation.” 

The beheadings claim traced back to a reporter who said she was relaying soldiers’ firsthand accounts. But other journalists on the ground in Kfar Aza, including Oren Ziv of +972 Magazine, which covers Israel and Palestine, and Samuel Forey of the French news outlet Le Monde, said their reporting did not corroborate this report.

During the tour through Kfar Aza, Ziv said he saw no evidence that Hamas beheaded babies, “and the army spokesperson or commanders also didn’t mention any such incidents,” he posted on X. Ziv said journalists in Kfar Aza were allowed to talk to hundreds of soldiers without supervision from the Israel Defense Forces’ communication team.

Similarly, Forey said, “No one told me about beheadings, even less about beheaded children, even less about 40 beheaded children.” Forey said emergency services personnel he spoke with had not seen any decapitated bodies. (Forey’s X posts were translated from French to English.) 

Given this topic’s heaviness and polarizing nature, Khalil, the Syracuse University professor, cautioned that “all claims and denials should be treated with skepticism and verified as much as possible.”

RELATED: Amid images and news of actual war, false and misleading claims about Israel-Hamas thrive

After formally filing for the New Hampshire primary Oct. 18, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy weighed in on whether the United States needs an Iron Dome missile defense system similar to Israel’s. Ramaswamy concluded it does because the U.S. lags its adversaries’ military capabilities.

“I think the U.S. needs the equivalent of an Iron Dome because Russia has hypersonic missile capabilities ahead of that of the U.S.,” Ramaswarmy said. “We are vulnerable to new threats on our homeland. Those hypersonic missiles can reach the United States today, we’re badly vulnerable.” 

Military experts told PolitiFact they agree that the U.S. lags Russia in the development of hypersonic missiles. However, Ramaswamy ignores that U.S. research and development is ahead of Russia in the pursuit of a more technologically sophisticated and useful generation of hypersonic missiles. The experts said Russia’s hypersonic weapons program is somewhat overhyped. 

PolitiFact reached out to Ramaswamy’s campaign. We didn’t hear back. 

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy addresses voters Oct. 14, 2023, at a town hall in Exeter, New Hampshire. (Samantha Putterman/PolitiFact)

We previously examined Ramaswamy’s comments about the Iron Dome, which is Israel’s air defense missile system designed to shoot down incoming projectiles. He said Oct. 9 that “we don’t have an Iron Dome in this country, yet, we’re vulnerable to nuclear missile attacks any given day.” We found his view was premised on misunderstandings about U.S. missile defense capabilities and needs.

The race for hypersonic missiles

Experts told PolitiFact that Ramaswamy has a point that today, Russia, unlike the U.S., is able to deploy hypersonic missiles. But they question whether this is as dangerous as Ramaswamy says.

Hypersonic missiles have received heightened attention since Russia began deploying them in Ukraine. But they have existed for decades; since the 1950s, some missiles have qualified as hypersonic by traveling more than five times the speed of sound (or around 4,000 miles per hour). These include intercontinental ballistic missiles, known as ICBMs, which can carry nuclear warheads from one continent to another.

Hypersonic missiles travel so fast because when they reach space, gravity hurls them to hypersonic speeds. 

“It’s not hard to make a ballistic missile hypersonic,” said Brendan Green, a University of Cincinnati professor who has studied nuclear issues. “Nature will do this for you.”

A more sophisticated type of hypersonic missile would be one that could “travel at a low level, to glide, to be launched from aircraft, to maneuver to avoid defenses,” or some combination of those traits, said Lance Janda, a Cameron University military historian. 

One way these weapons can achieve long ranges with limited fuel is by deploying wings that allow them to “glide” for thousands of miles and maneuver without propulsion, at least for a limited time, Janda said. These are the kinds of advances that U.S. hypersonic missiles are expected to include. 

Such missiles might be targeted at an aircraft carrier, a command-and-control center, or even a high-value individual, said Iain Boyd, director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at the University of Colorado Boulder. 

U.S. engineers were at the forefront of hypersonic research in the late 1950s, but the Vietnam War crowded out that research because hypersonic aircraft weren’t relevant to fighting in the jungle, The Wall Street Journal reported Sept. 18. A lack of testing infrastructure has since slowed the pace of development.

As the U.S. took a backseat, Russia accelerated its efforts on hypersonics.

Now, though, new generation hypersonic missiles are “on the drawing board” for the United States, Janda said.

The U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force are each developing these missiles, and the Pentagon’s 2023 budget includes around $5 billion for the weapons. 

Designing and building the new generation of technologically advanced hypersonic missiles is challenging, experts say. Sensitive electronics in the missles have to be shielded from the extreme heat generated by traveling at high speed. 

As a result, hypersonic missiles are estimated to cost about one-third more to procure and field than comparable ballistic missiles, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

A common hypersonic glide body launches from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, in Kauai, Hawaii, in March 2020 during a Defense Department flight experiment. (U.S. Navy via AP)

What does Russia have?

The Pentagon hasn’t released estimates of how many hypersonic missiles they think Russia has. But in March 2022, Russia claimed it had reached a milestone after successfully launching two hypersonic Kinzhal missiles against Ukraine. Kinzhal means “dagger” in Russian.

Available information suggests that Russia’s weapons use decades-old technology, not the advances sought by the United States. This is also supported by reports that Ukraine has been able to intercept and shoot down subsequent Kinzhal missiles. 

Boyd called the Russian technology “primitive” compared to U.S. missiles in development.

Janda said there is no evidence that Russians can mass-produce the missiles, “and it also doesn’t mean their missiles are reliable. … so we should all take any claims regarding Russian hypersonic weapons with a huge grain of salt.”

China, meanwhile, tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August 2021. It circled the globe before hitting near its target. Military analysts believe it is much further along than Russia’s projects.

Ultimately, “I don’t see hypersonics as that big of a deal,” Janda said. “They don’t upend our nuclear deterrence. Besides, we’re going flat out to develop new hypersonic systems of our own. And if history is any guide, our stuff will be much, much better.”

Our ruling

Ramaswamy said, “Russia has hypersonic missile capabilities ahead of that of the U.S.”

Experts say Ramaswamy has a point: Russia has deployed hypersonic missiles against Ukraine while the U.S. is still developing its own hypersonic missiles. 

But Ramaswamy’s statement ignores important context: Russia’s missiles are primitive and do not pose the level of threat that he suggests. And the versions the U.S. is developing are expected to have sophisticated abilities to glide, be launched by aircraft and maneuver to avoid defenses. 

The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details. We rate it Half True.

RELATED: The US may not have an Iron Dome, but the military is spending on this technology. Here’s how