Troops fight through burning streets. Missiles shoot down fighter jets. Drones pulverize tanks. The dramatic imagery has the trappings of real combat, but it’s video game clips that fuel misinformation.
Footage from the war on the subject arma 3 Video game, often labeled “Live” or “Breaking News” to make it appear real, has been used repeatedly in fake videos about Russia’s offensive in Ukraine in recent months.
The frequency and ease with which gaming footage is believed to be genuine, even by some media outlets, and shared as authentic messages on social media underscores what researchers say has serious potential for spreading misinformation.
“The fact that it keeps happening reminds us how easy it is to fool people,” Claire Wardle, co-director of the Information Futures Lab at Brown University, told AFP.
“As video game graphics become more sophisticated, CGI (computer-generated images) may appear real at first glance. People need to know how to verify images, including looking at metadata, so these mistakes aren’t made, especially by newsrooms.”
Arma 3, whose Czech developers promise “a real fighting game in a huge military sandbox”, allows players to create various battlefield scenarios using planes, tanks and a variety of weapons.
Gamers often upload hours of game footage to platforms like YouTube, and researchers blame easy availability for the abuse.
In the comments below an Arma 3 video titled “Ukraine’s counteroffensive!” – which simulated a missile attack on a column of tanks – wrote one user who apparently took it for real: “We must ask Ukraine after this war to train NATO forces in combat.”
First TikTok War
“While it’s flattering that Arma 3 simulates modern war conflicts in such a realistic way, we’re certainly not pleased that it can be confused with real combat material and used as wartime propaganda,” said a representative of Bohemia Interactive, the game’s developer. said in a statement.
“We’ve tried to address such content by reporting these videos to platform providers, but it’s very ineffective. With every video removed, ten more are uploaded every day.”
In recent years, Arma 3 videos have been used in misrepresentations of other conflicts, including Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine, with the clips often being debunked by global fact-checkers.
That includes AFP, which has debunked several videos containing Arma 3 content, including one in November that also claimed to show Russian tanks being hit by US-made Javelin missiles. The clip has been viewed tens of thousands of times on social media.
Bohemia Interactive said that the misleading videos related to the conflict in Ukraine had recently “gained traction”.
Dubbed the “first TikTok war” by observers, it’s a conflict like no other as a steady stream of images from the front lines — some of them misleading or false — flock to social media platforms.
Given the simple nature of the Arma 3 misinformation, researchers say it’s unlikely to be the work of state actors.
“I suspect the people who are posting this content are just trolls doing it to see how many people they can fool,” Nick Waters of digital forensics firm Bellingcat told AFP.
“Secondary multipliers will be gullible people who will pick up and distribute this content to collect fake internet points.”
Bohemia interactive said the fake videos were “massively shared” by social media users, many of whom are looking for what researchers call engagement bait — eye-catching posts that generate more engagement through likes, shares and comments.
Different from reality
The Arma 3 videos, which the creator acknowledged are “quite capable of spreading fake news,” have also been shared by various mainstream media outlets and government institutions worldwide, Bohemia Interactive said.
In a live broadcast in November, Romania TV falsely presented old Arma 3 video as combat footage from Ukraine, and a former Romanian defense minister and former intelligence chief offered his analysis of the footage as if it were real.
This comes after another Romanian news channel, Antena 3, made the same mistake in February – among the experts the channel invited to analyze its video of Arma 3 was the Romanian Defense Ministry spokesman.
Bohemia Interactive has urged users to use gaming footage responsibly, to refrain from using clickbait video titles and to clearly indicate that it is from a video game.
Researchers say their videos are relatively easier to debunk compared to “deepfakes” — fabricated images, audio files and videos created using technology experts warn is shockingly sophisticated and gaining ground in the criminal underworld .
“If you know what you’re looking for, these (Arma 3) videos aren’t really that hard to identify as fake,” Waters said.
“As good as Arma 3 looks, it’s still very different from reality.”
The fact that many are unable to do so points to another stark reality in the age of misinformation.
“It shows that some people don’t have the skills to navigate the current information environment,” Waters said.
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