I've not posted much on here about my AI & disinformation reporting for BBC Verify, the BBC's OSINT unit, but after this week's surge of AI-generated Iran war videos, now's a good time. A common question we get is: "Why do people create & post this stuff?" Today's story tries to answer that 👇

@thomascopeland.bsky.social and I try to explain why the rollout of user location data by X matters and how it's changing the conversation on the platform after some high-engagement political accounts were criticised for misleading users. www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKr3...

Good spot and follow-up by @thomascopeland.bsky.social for BBC Verify Live: Shein removes 'Luigi Mangione' image from its website www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c2...

Me for the BBC World Service US rural public media brace for 'life or death' cuts www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Photo by Olga Malchevska, verification work by @benedictgarman.com, @thomascopeland.bsky.social and @emmapengelly.bsky.social, also feeding into our live page: www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cw...

What BBC Verify can do for the audience and the whole corporation. Yesterday, @jcheetham.bsky.social, @thomascopeland.bsky.social and I advised news eds why we thought which flight the Tates were on. Then did the same on the News Channel. Later proven correct. www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

This was correct, at time of writing, around 3pm, London time. Last reckoning was the plane was about 50km from Ft Lauderdale, expected landing time around 4pm. Great working (literally) elbow-to-elbow with @thomascopeland.bsky.social today.

Lots of monitoring of FlightRadar24 and ADS-B Exchange going on right now from @jcheetham.bsky.social and @thomascopeland.bsky.social, who are standing up a lot of what we can say on the flight speculated to be used by the Tate Brothers. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c7...

1/ THREAD How do we know what we know about Gaza this morning, going from SnapChat. Essentially, how did @thomascopeland.bsky.social and I work out where the banner was, and you can too? (Call it OSint if you must.) www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cd...