At a time when the fog of war is rapidly becoming more digital, the social media platform X (previously twitter) has made a wallet-first action against the emerging wave of fake news. With the West Asia crisis turning into a multi-front war with the US, Israel, and Iran, the platform has declared a significant change of direction: any creator who posts AI-generated war footage without providing clear disclosure will be stripped of their revenue-sharing privileges at once.
It is an uncharacteristically assertive moderation of a platform that has frequently promoted a hands-off attitude to content, led by the head of product at X, Nikita Bier. However, the aspect of AI slop and hyper-real fake airstrikes filling our feeds has elevated the stakes beyond free speech up into global security.
The Economics of Deception: Why Labels Do Matter
The same has been the motivational factor behind high-engagement accounts on X: the greater the views the greater the money. With the existing revenue-sharing framework, accounts that have blue checkmarks are charged depending on the impressions that they create on the part of the other verified users. That has unconsciously established a misinformation economy.
The platform was flooded with videos when tensions went over the top this week after major military operations in the region. Others were of Iranian ballistic missiles allegedly landing on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem; others of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai were also under alleged bombardment. Although most of them were disproved as an AR (Augmented Reality) or artificial intelligence within hours, they had already amassed millions in views, that is, thousands of dollars in potential rewards to the posters.
Nikita Bier claimed that it is highly important that individuals can access true information on the battlefield during the war. It is inconsequential in terms of the current AI technologies, and it is easy to produce content that can deceive individuals.
The new policy strikes creators at the point of pain:
- First Offense: The Creator Revenue Sharing program suspension of 90 days is mandatory.
- Violation(s): These will result in a permanent ban on all monetization features.
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Community Notes: Front Line of Verification
This policy is enforced with the help of a special, crowdsourced system: Community Notes. Users who have flagged a post as AI-generated and the creator has not used the new Made with AI badge on the platform are suspended in the process.
This imparts a huge burden on the users themselves. Community Notes have now turned into a cyberspace battlefield in the new surge of West Asian video footage. The collective effort by OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) researchers on the site determined the suspicious flickering of the waves and the unnatural light when an AI-generated clip of a so-called phantom fleet in the Persian Gulf went viral, which then prompted a modification of the video before it could be monetized entirely.
In addition to Community Notes, X is also making use of AI metadata and “digital signals” of the generative tools such as Midjourney and Runway, to automatically recognize when a video has not been shot on a human lens.
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The Human Cost of “Digital Fog”
It is necessary to look behind the screens in order to comprehend the reason why this policy is implemented now. To a family in Tehran, Tel Aviv, or Washington D.C., a viral video is not a content, it is a heartbeat.
Sarah, who is a student living currently in exile and whose family is still living in a conflict zone, says that she saw a video of her neighborhood being hit by a drone. I was in a state of panic trying to contact them in three hours, but later I discovered that it was a clip in a video game that was filtered by the AI. Someone had stolen those three hours of my life to make couple of dollars of advertisement income!
This is the human side of the West Asia crisis in the social media. The rate of AI creation has surpassed the capability of human beings to mourn or check. X from demonetizing the undisclosed AI, is trying to de-incentivize the so-called trauma-farming that has turned into a regular feature of contemporary conflict-covering.
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