By Sheila Dang and Riniki Sanyal
(Reuters) - The rapid spread of misleading claims and doctored images in the aftermath of a deadly rampage by Hamas gunmen in Israel has put the focus on Elon Musk's X platform, which has drawn the ire of the European Union.
Part of the challenge for those combating fake information online is that changes made by Musk earlier this year have made it more difficult to track the full scale of deception on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, social media researchers told Reuters.
Researchers studying the origins and proliferation of misinformation said they have lost the ability to automatically track keywords, hashtags and other information about real-time events, as X eliminated access to a data tool that was free to academics before Musk's acquisition of the platform in October last year.
Without the tool, researchers now need to manually analyze thousands of links, said Ruslan Trad, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab).
Asked for comment, an X representative said more than 500 unique Community Notes, a feature that lets users add context to potentially misleading content, have been posted about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In a post on the social media platform on Monday, X said it removed newly created accounts affiliated with the Islamist group Hamas and had "actioned tens of thousands of posts for sharing graphic media, violent speech, and hateful conduct." X did not disclose the...
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