False Narratives Get Lucrative

New X ad-sharing program allows superspreaders of misinformation on viral posts to share advertising income from major brands

- JACK BREWSTER, COALTER PALMER and NIKITA VASHISTH

ON X, FORMERLY TWITTER, PRO-grammatic advertisements for dozens of major brands, governments, educational institutions and nonprofits are being displayed in the feeds directly below viral posts advancing false or egregiously misleading claims about the Israel-Hamas war, a NewsGuard analysis has found. Under the terms of a new advertising revenue sharing program that X introduced for its "creators," a portion of the advertising income generated by these organizations would apparently be shared with these superspreaders of misinformation.

From November 13 to November 22, 2023, NewsGuard analysts reviewed programmatic ads that appeared in the feeds below 30 viral tweets that contained false or egregiously misleading information about the war. Programmatic ads are served via algorithms to target digital ads to online readers. Brands typically do not select where programmatic ads run and indeed are unaware of where their programmatic ads appear.

These 30 viral tweets were posted by 10 of some of X's worst purveyors of Israel-Hamas war-related misinformation, and cumulatively reached an audience of over 92 million viewers, according to X data. On average, each tweet was seen by 3 million people. The accounts News Guard analyzed had previously been identified as repeat spreaders of misinformation about the conflict.

The 30 tweets advanced some of the most egregious false or misleading claims about the war. These include that the October 7  Hamas attack against Israel was a "false flag" and that CNN staged footage of an October 2023 rocket attack on a news crew in Israel.