A billboard in central Tehran, Iran, depicts named Iranian ballistic missiles in service, with text in Arabic reading"the honest promise" and text in Persian reading"Israel is weaker than a spider's web," on April 15. Iran attacked Israel over the weekend with missiles, which it said was a response to a deadly strike on its consulate building in Damascus, Syria.
ISD researchers identified over 30"false, misleading, or AI generated images and videos" on X that garnered over 35 million views in total, according to the blog post. When NPR reviewed and revisited the posts Monday afternoon U.S. Eastern time, some had been removed, but others continued to gain views. One of the posts came from a satire account, but the poster did not flag that the post was satirical.
NPR reached out to X for a comment about the misleading posts on its platform and received an automated response., which used to mean the user had been verified by Twitter but now means the user has an active subscription to X Premium and meets X's eligibility rules. Premium accounts enjoy a wider reach on the platform and stand to gain revenue from their exposure.