Experts say there has been an unprecedented number of fake claims about the Israel-Hamas war circulating online. Bellingcat's open source investigators showed us how they find out the truth.
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00:00 (dramatic music)
00:02 We have been trying to collect videos, images, claims,
00:05 content from a variety of different social media networks
00:08 to try to piece together what is actually happening
00:11 over in Israel and Gaza.
00:12 My name is Kalina Koltaj,
00:15 and I am a researcher and trainer at Bellingcat.
00:18 It's been shocking to see so many people
00:22 fall for misinformation,
00:23 particularly in these times of emotional charge distress,
00:26 a lot of content tends to go viral.
00:28 One of the claims that kind of like stuck out to us
00:30 was this claim that Israel had destroyed
00:33 and attacked the third oldest church.
00:35 That is an emotionally charged story
00:37 because it's an historic building,
00:38 it has to do with religion.
00:40 This church is actually located further away,
00:43 outside where we think this blast range
00:44 could have possibly been.
00:45 What we found interesting is that there was like a statement
00:48 that was later found put out by the church itself
00:51 saying that they were not bombed.
00:52 So from there, we wanted to take the approach
00:55 of not just saying like,
00:56 "Hey, we are taking this church at its word."
00:58 We wanted to see if we can actually pinpoint
01:01 where those missiles were hit.
01:02 (explosion)
01:04 Going on telegram channels,
01:07 we were able to find actually other angles
01:10 of the same bombing occurring.
01:12 From there, using Google Maps,
01:14 we look for unique identifying components.
01:17 So if it's the building or particularly tall structure,
01:20 that really helps us try to narrow down
01:21 where these missiles hit.
01:23 We then later did find a claim from the UN
01:26 that said like a couple of schools were hit.
01:28 We're like, "All right, let's look to see
01:30 where these schools are located."
01:31 And again, using Google Maps and searching around,
01:34 we were able to pinpoint and say,
01:35 "Hey, we suspect that maybe one of these bombs
01:37 actually hit a school instead of the church."
01:39 We were able to conclude
01:40 that not only was the church not hit
01:42 because it wasn't in the right area,
01:43 but that a school was also hit.
01:45 The claim that this is from a recent strike is true,
01:48 but the claim that it was hit the church was false.
01:51 (dramatic music)
01:55 (phone ringing)
01:58 I think one of the toughest questions around misinformation
02:00 is who is behind the misinformation.
02:03 Sometimes it's really clear to say like this one actor
02:06 or this one account is the one who started it
02:09 and it went viral from there.
02:10 But sometimes it could be a number of smaller accounts
02:13 and it's sometimes really muddy.
02:15 And to be clear, misinformation and disinformation
02:17 are two different things.
02:18 So misinformation is something that people are sharing
02:22 that might be misleading or incorrect,
02:23 but oftentimes the person sharing it doesn't even know.
02:26 Comparatively to disinformation,
02:28 which often has the explicit intent to misinform
02:32 and perhaps persuade people
02:34 to believe in one thing or the other.
02:35 One tactic that you'll see happen oftentimes,
02:39 particularly in cases of breaking footage,
02:42 is someone will use an old piece of media,
02:44 so an old image or an old video,
02:47 and reshare it with the incorrect context
02:50 of what that content's originally from.
02:52 This video that's appeared to be shot at night
02:54 claimed that it was Hamas shooting missiles at Israel.
02:58 That is a very difficult video to geolocate
03:00 to see exactly where this is.
03:02 But we were able to find an older version of the video.
03:05 We think this video actually occurred in Syria.
03:07 If we can go off of that,
03:08 we can at least come to the immediate conclusion
03:10 that it was not actively happening today.
03:13 One thing you'll sometimes see go viral
03:14 is footage that doesn't have anything to do
03:16 with like an explosion or a particular conflict
03:19 or may not even be from that area.
03:21 And one example is this footage
03:23 of what appears to be a paraglider,
03:25 people parachuting in across the sky.
03:27 And I think this went particularly viral
03:29 because there was footage from the music festival
03:33 that had Hamas paragliders coming in.
03:35 So this video was going viral
03:37 on a variety of different platforms
03:38 with the claim that this was paragliders
03:41 who were from Hamas landing in Israel.
03:44 One thing that was particularly tricky
03:45 and interesting about that
03:47 is some of the misinformation videos that went viral
03:49 maybe sometimes put text or covered over the images
03:53 or the building that made it easier to geolocate
03:55 and easier to debunk.
03:56 So all you really see are men flying down from the sky.
04:00 Reuters actually did a geolocation
04:03 on using a building that we see in the shot.
04:06 Going onto TikTok, I was actually able to find
04:08 an older video of this occurring.
04:11 And we were able to say, confirm, yes, this building,
04:14 which we double-checked with Reuters,
04:16 it was actually located in Cairo in Egypt.
04:18 So not in the right area.
04:20 And also occurred in September.
04:22 Not only that, we know that this building
04:24 was near a military school.
04:25 So it's reasonable to assume
04:27 that these were potentially military students
04:29 practicing parachuting and paragliding.
04:32 So the things that we found that were untrue
04:34 about that video is that it was not Hamas soldiers.
04:37 It was not taking place in Israel.
04:39 One of the most powerful tools in misinformation
04:43 is that it creates an emotional response in us.
04:45 And so when I find content online
04:48 that makes me generate, like, oh my gosh,
04:50 makes me feel something,
04:51 that's actually a really good signal to check,
04:53 like, is this true, is this not true?
04:55 We feel really compelled
04:57 to want to share that with everyone.
04:58 An example of really emotionally charged content
05:01 that we tackled is this footage that claimed
05:04 that a girl was being beaten and tortured at a concert.
05:07 And this was tricky because we had already heard
05:09 and verified claims that there was an attack
05:11 by Hamas at a music festival.
05:13 So what we ended up doing is trying to see
05:16 where did this footage originate from?
05:18 And one of the techniques that we can use
05:20 is a reverse image search on a video itself.
05:23 So oftentimes what we need to do
05:25 is actually take multiple still frames from a video
05:28 and to see if we could find that being posted anywhere else.
05:32 We were able to actually define
05:33 where that video originated from
05:35 and it matched a story from 2016 in Guatemala.
05:38 One of the other clues we looked at is actually audio.
05:41 That could be a really useful tool
05:43 because if you'd imagine on TikTok,
05:45 people overlay audio of them speaking over videos,
05:49 sometimes adding music to things,
05:51 which can make it harder sometimes
05:52 to even find out the original origin.
05:54 With this video, when we're listening to the audio,
05:56 it didn't appear to sound like the original audio.
05:59 Initially, because it seemed like it was in the open air
06:05 as if someone was on the ground there recording the footage.
06:09 But when we were listening to it,
06:10 it actually sounded like someone was at a different location.
06:13 Like if someone's recording in a closed, tight space
06:16 versus being there physically on the street.
06:19 So while this was a real true and distressing case,
06:22 it was not representative of any of the people
06:26 who were at the concert.
06:28 So another video that we saw trending on the internet
06:31 shows sort of almost like a city on fire.
06:33 That's what it appears like.
06:34 It's very red in the video.
06:36 It claimed to say, "Here is all these fires,
06:39 "all these buildings being damaged,"
06:40 and this was the work of Israel.
06:42 What we did find is that this was a bit of an older video,
06:45 which actually came from TikTok.
06:47 We were able to then geolocate the video
06:50 to actually being in Algeria.
06:51 It was actually a response to a winning football match.
06:55 And so these were actually people celebrating.
06:57 These were fireworks.
06:58 It was a time of excitement.
06:59 It was not an attack by Israel onto Gaza,
07:02 but in fact, it was a bunch of fans celebrating in Algeria.
07:06 One thing we found particularly surprising and interesting
07:08 is that there has been a fair amount of video game footage
07:12 used as misleading content.
07:14 In particular, there was actually some video game footage
07:17 that I found online that people misappropriated
07:20 it saying it was "Arma 3."
07:21 And I found the original TikTok account
07:23 that actually shared the footage,
07:25 and they were very clear in their account.
07:27 They say, "These are all fabricated videos.
07:29 "They're using a software or game
07:32 "called Digital Combat Simulator.
07:33 "It says it in all the descriptions."
07:35 However, I was able to find that this person's video footage
07:39 was then downloaded and then shared across not just TikTok.
07:42 With the context, here is actual live attacks happening.
07:46 So here's a missile that Israel is shooting off,
07:48 and here's a missile that Gaza is shooting off.
07:50 But in reality, these were all digitally fabricated videos,
07:53 and in some cases, misattributed to "Arma 3."
07:56 So sometimes, even when the debunks are right,
07:58 there could still be a bit that needs to be done.
08:00 We got word that there was an attack,
08:07 an explosion at a hospital.
08:09 In Gaza, the Al-Auhi Baptist Hospital in Gaza.
08:13 Initially, we started seeing claims
08:15 that this was an attack by Israel,
08:19 that it was IDF that shot a missile and hit the hospital.
08:23 And then shortly after, we started seeing the claim
08:24 that this was actually a failed missile attack by Hamas.
08:28 We know very little so far.
08:29 There's very conflicting stories.
08:31 A lot of analysis started happening publicly
08:33 on channels like Twitter or X.
08:35 Some of the footage was started to appear.
08:38 Some of it was actually old footage,
08:40 but there was also some footage that was brand new
08:42 that we couldn't necessarily find
08:43 anywhere else on the Internet.
08:45 We were able to accurately geolocate to the right location
08:48 that we are confident is of the recent attack,
08:51 the recent explosion.
08:53 From there, we were able to piece together
08:54 what looks like the crater.
08:56 We were able to find one that seemed to be a recent crater
08:58 that's related to the attack.
09:00 Based on the size of the crater,
09:02 from the composites we put together,
09:04 from footage on the ground,
09:05 we were able to assess that, say,
09:07 this is a smaller crater, it's not a huge crater.
09:09 There are theories out there that if it was a JNAT,
09:12 that might have exploded in the air
09:13 and then landed, it could have caused that,
09:14 or it could be something that might be consistent
09:16 with the smaller munition.
09:18 But right now, we just don't know.
09:20 We know that, unfortunately,
09:22 there is loss of life here, right?
09:24 We can't confirm independently just yet
09:27 how many people have died from this attack.
09:29 We do know that it was at the hospital.
09:32 We do know it's a crater.
09:33 We can't determine the size of munition.
09:36 I think it's really important for us to figure out
09:37 the truth in a case like this,
09:39 because it's so egregious.
09:41 It's a case of an attack at a hospital,
09:43 and if it was intentional or even accidental,
09:46 regardless, it's really important to know
09:49 what happened there.
09:50 One thing that's been particularly telling
09:59 about this conflict is how many people
10:02 and even accounts that we normally think
10:05 to be trustworthy have fallen prey to misinformation.
10:08 We see this also happening with Biden,
10:10 with other officials.
10:11 Some of the danger with misinformation
10:14 is the ability to sway the public.
10:16 When we're looking at misinformation online,
10:18 it's one thing we always have to be cognizant of
10:20 is what is the goal of this misinformation?
10:22 Is it just to make money?
10:24 So is the goal to cause distrust and Islamophobia
10:29 or antisemitism or maybe a little bit of both?
10:32 One thing that I often recommend to my friends,
10:34 my family, my colleagues, everyone,
10:36 particularly in this day and age,
10:37 is to actually verify across multiple sources.
10:39 It's really important for us to take a breath, right?
10:43 We need to take the moment because we're all desperately,
10:46 all of us are trying to figure out
10:47 what is going on in the world.
10:48 We're trying to like suss out what is real and what's not,
10:51 and sometimes that takes time.
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