X Is Drowning in Disinformation Following US and Israel’s Attack on Iran

U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the United States and Israel had launched an attack on Iran Saturday morning.PHOTOGRAPH: Anna Moneymaker/GETTY IMAGES

Minutes after Donald Trump announced that the US and Israeli governments had launched a “major combat operation” against Iran in the early hours of Saturday morning, disinformation about the attack and Tehran’s response flooded X.

WIRED has reviewed hundreds of posts on X, some of which have racked up millions of views, that promote misleading claims about the locations and scale of the attack.

Elon Musk’s social media platform is a verifiable mess: In some cases, alleged video footage of the attack shared in posts on X are actually months or years old. In several posts, video footage of apparent attacks have been attributed to incorrect locations. A number of images shared on X appear to be altered or generated with AI. Other ...