Video Game Footage Used As Disinformation In Israel, Hamas Conflict

Content Moderation

from the nice-try dept

We’ve talked about this sort of thing before, but here we go again, I guess. For the last decade or so, video games have gotten realistic enough in terms of how they visually depict wartime scenarios that misinformation utilizing video game footage has become a somewhat regular thing. Regular enough that the larger world has started to catch onto the game with more speed and game producers are even getting involved advising the public on how to spot the difference between real and fake war footage (more on that further down the post). Previous versions of this sort of thing saw Iran using game footage to pretend it had weapons it didn’t have, Russia using it to claim America was supporting ISIS, and both sides of the Korean DMZ using game footage to show how great at war they are but can’t demonstrate with IRL footage, apparently.

And now, with the Israeli, Hamas conflict ramping up after one of the most brutal and violent attacks in Israel’s history this past weekend, game footage is also being passed around trying to rally support for Hamas.

Footage from the 2013 game Arma 3 is spreading virally across multiple social media sites, presented as real spectator video of ongoing military actions between Israelis and Palestinians. The misleading videos are part of a wave of war disinformation that has run rampant across social media and highlights just how realistic the heavily modded game can appear at a glance.

Another X video with millions of views shows Arma 3 footage of a shoulder-mounted rocket launched at a helicopter, labeled as “Hamas fighters shooting down Israel war helicopter in Gaza.” X-user Shayan Sardarizadeh has debunked that footage as well as other examples of game footage that have been taken down as of press time.

Now, very smart and good boy Elon Musk has happily laid off all kinds of staff members who were involved in combatting misinformation. As a result, the onus for pointing out the fake nature of these tweets and footage is left to the community notes process. And, while that hasn’t been a complete failure, as evidenced by everyone quickly figuring out that this is all bullshit, it sure would be nice if the platform that has since become more rife with fun things like abuse and antisemitism had the staff members still to assist.

It should be noted that these aren’t attempts at misinformation that can be counted on one hand, either. There is a ton of this out there. So much so, that the publisher of Arma 3 has felt compelled to chime in, both to disavow the use of game footage in this manner, as well as to offer some advice on how to spot such fakes.

“While it’s flattering that Arma 3 simulates modern war conflicts in such a realistic way, we are certainly not pleased that it can be mistaken for real-life combat footage and used as war propaganda,” Bohemia Interactive PR Manager Pavel Křižka wrote in a blog post originally published last November (and updated on Tuesday). “We’ve been trying to fight against such content by flagging these videos to platform providers… but it’s very ineffective. With every video taken down, ten more are uploaded each day.”

In that same blog post, Bohemia Interactive offers tips for how social media users “can distinguish such in-game videos from real-world footage.” These include the use of low resolutions (which obscure some of the blocky polygons in the game), “unnatural” particle effects, and sound effects that “are often distinguishable from reality.” Most of these fake videos also lack human fighters, because, “while [Arma 3] can simulate the movement of military vehicles relatively realistically, capturing natural looking humans in motion is still very difficult, even for the most modern of games,” Bohemia writes.

Depending on where you land in the generational divide, you might be surprised just how easy it is to pass game footage off as real life war footage. That’s how good the visuals in these games are getting, particularly when the footage is handpicked and manipulated to avoid what would otherwise be telltale signs of the fake.

So consider this your PSA: any war footage from non-trusted outlets, and even trusted outlets, should be viewed with a narrow gaze until geolocation verification is provided as well.

Filed Under: content moderation, israel, misinformation, video games