Social media firms deploying ‘crisis teams’ to combat Gaza ‘misinformation’

Ireland’s Digital Services Commissioner, John Evans, has said there has been a “heightened sense of activity” among social media platforms in response to misinformation about the conflict in Israel and Gaza. He said some of the platforms had deployed crisis response teams and experts with specific language skills to respond to posts about the conflict in Gaza.

Mr Evans, who was appointed under the Digital Services Act, is responsible for ensuring that platforms regulate content, including misinformation.

He told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland that under the Act the platforms now have an obligation to create a facility where people can complain about content and ask for it to be taken down. Social media users who are not happy following their initial complaint can take an appeal, he said.

“And then there’s other checks and balances after that as well that give power to people around the content that’s on platforms,” he said.

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Mr Evans acknowledged the powers of his office were limited at present as its functions have yet to be ratified under the Digital Services Act, the legislation for which is due to be passed early next year.

Because of the limited powers at present, Mr Evans’ contacts with the social media platforms have been on an informal basis. However, he denied that making a complaint would be a waste of time.

“I do think what’s going on is very damaging. And misinformation, disinformation online can be used by different actors for different purposes,” he said. Mr Evans added that “malicious actors” exploit crises and pointed out that the EU Commission had contacted platforms to remind them of their responsibilities.

“We can see from the media that there’s sufficient concern, in fact, to issue information requests, which I see they’ve done with X yesterday and it will take time for the Commission to analyse what information has come back. But you’ll see from the requests that have gone out to X, for example, that there’s actually quite a short deadline for them to respond to that. So it’s a pretty fluid situation and evolving quite quickly.”

Earlier this week the company, formerly Twitter, said it was trying to take action on a flood of posts sharing graphic media, violent speech and hateful conduct about the war between Israel and Hamas.