Why Iran is winning the slop war: The most prominent AI fantasies about the war on social media exaggerate the destruction and conjure visions of America’s failure.
In the country at the center of the conflict, tight media and internet controls, pervasive fear, and hobbled infrastructure have stemmed its flow. In nearby Gulf states, wartimein social-media posts from citizens and expat influencers; similarly, Israeli authorities have expanded their press crackdown, citing the conflict to justify heightened restrictions and.
. The American press’s access to Iran is severely limited, as is its access to the United States military, which has no “boots on the ground” and the battlefield — where the possible audiences for such videos are to be found — is the entire internet, where such videos overlap, stylistically, with spam. But the slop war isn’t primarily about officially aligned media — not by a long shot. AI video tools, which are available to pretty much anyone, have been deployed in service of a different, globally common objective, by people with little to nothing at stake in the actual war: maximizing engagement and maybe making a little cash. On TikTok and X, videos like this are often eventually flagged and removed, but not before amassing many millions of views, then reposted by a lower tier of opportunistic accounts. These videos have been all over the place for the past couple of weeks:Los estadounidenses están entrando en pánico, llenando bidones en las gasolineras para asegurar los precios actuales mientras los precios del petróleo se disparan.On this front of the slop war, videos can be surreal and unbelievable, pointed and satirical, or plausible and misleading. Many of these videos wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny from deeply interested parties who have a direct stake in the conflict or are following it more closely, but that’s not really who, or what, these AI videos are for. They’re intended, instead, to exploit a subject of sudden and intense interest, part of the long, nihilistic tradition of. They’re directed at the vastly larger groups of people with only a passing awareness of the war, who are experiencing it largely not through active consumption but through passive algorithmic recommendation. They’re for harvesting views by reflecting or playing with what enormous gathered audiences are likely to look at and linger on. Taken together, they don’t express a clear interest in the war’s outcome. Instead, they’re following the logic of the “For You” page, which has been embraced by most major social platforms. At X, leadership identified this dynamic fairly quickly: Today we are revising our Creator Revenue Sharing policies to maintain authenticity of content on Timeline and prevent manipulation of the program. During times of war, it is critical that people have access to authentic information on the ground. With today’s AI technologies,…Prioritizing access to “authentic information on the ground” is a reasonable goal, and among the plausible effects of seeing misleading AI-generated videos everywhere is that people will be less able to tell what’s real and will eventually become more suspicious ofis better off for the proliferation of AI video on X or elsewhere.) Before — and, albeit to a lesser extent, since — the X crackdown, the content of these videos revealed something else: that the most engaging fake content was, if not explicitly pro-Iran, at least more aligned with its efforts than against them. Into the void of information coming from the Middle East flowed an endless supply of videos suggesting unlikely, extreme, and enticing outcomes: swarms of missiles obliterating Dubai and Tel Aviv; societal breakdown in the United States; American warships exploding and jets falling out of the sky. If you’re a professional slop merchant — the Trump Hormuz video above originated from a meme account allegedly based in Switzerland — you know that rendering strange and unbelievable scenarios is a good way to get views. If you’ve started working around the war, you’ve probably also noticed that audiences seem more interested in stories representing U.S. and Israeli failure and overreach than in content that suggests its campaign is going well. That may be true not just abroad but also here in the U.S., where the young war is, the son of the deposed shah of Iran, whose followers in the diaspora seem receptive to fantastical AI content teasing his glorious return.) To paraphrase Field Marshal Montgomery, General MacArthur, andThis dynamic ends up creating an uncomfortable alignment for the mostly American social-media companies, stuck between the incentives created by their platforms and the military aims of the country against which their home country has declared war. To take a purely sociopathic, market-centric view of what’s happening — one that I describe here mainly because it’s pretty close to how social-media CEOs talk about their platforms and users in the abstract — AI is helping to meet existing demand for war-related content online. Perhaps it’s even inducing more demand, as fake, misleading, or trivializing video makes theas time has gone on, don’t serve the interests of their users. Now, they’re also finding themselves, despite their own recent political realignments with the Trump administration, organically if indirectly oriented against its war effort, providing a space in which much of the world can consume, share, and reveal its fantasies of American failure. Manage preferences.The impact of the war has quickly gone from bad to potentially catastrophic. Here’s the latest reporting and analysis.The acronym for “Trump Always Chickens Out” was originally about “Liberation Day” tariffs. Now it’s morphed into a broader Trump insult.The governor and possible presidential hopeful strongly backed Juliana Stratton, who will likely become the sixth Black woman to serve in the Senate.Every day in downtown Manhattan immigrants arriving for routine hearings are targeted by ICE agents and taken from their families.The official explanations for Trump’s ailments — from CVI to a hand bruise to a neck rash — are odd and incomplete. Here’s everything we know.Almost nothing he has said or done suggests he knows what he is doing, and this is still just the beginning.Israel conducted another round of decapitation strikes, Europe is not impressed with Trump, and more of the latest developments on Day 18 of the war.Is the “minor excursion” very complete, ending soon or in a “couple weeks,” or just beginning? Here’s the latest on what Trump feels in his bones.The UFC is holding a cage match to celebrate America’s 250th birthday . Here’s what we know about plans, tickets, and the fight card.He said Cuba is his for the taking, a predecessor envies his Iran war, people with learning disabilities shouldn’t be president, and more.The Senate is taking up a version of the bill that doesn’t target transgender people or voting by mail, as Trump demanded.Wiles, who is the first woman to serve as chief of staff, has been diagnosed with an early stage of breast cancer.New York
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Embajada de Irán en México dice que Irán negocia con FIFA trasladar partidos del MundialLa Embajada de Irán en México informó el martes que el país está negociando con la FIFA para trasladar los partidos de Irán en el Mundial de Estados Unidos a México.
Read more »
Top counterterrorism official resigns over Trump’s Iran war, says Iran posed no imminent threatJoe Kent said Iran “posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
Read more »
Embajada de Irán en México dice que Irán negocia con FIFA trasladar partidos del MundialLa disputa pública entre Irán, la FIFA y el presidente de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, en torno a jugar en el Mundial en junio se trasladó a México, donde sus diplomáticos sugirieron que la selección iraní podría disputar allí sus partidos.
Read more »
Iran War Live: US Fires 5,000-Pound 'Deep Penetration' Weapons On IranThe U.S. military said the munitions targeted protected Iranian sites housing anti-ship cruise missiles posing a danger to international shipping.
Read more »
Why half the country tunes out legacy media on IranLegacy media's anti-military bias, first named by Terry Moran in 2006, persists — and the Iran conflict is exposing it once again.
Read more »
Iran War Briefing Day 19: Another Iran Minister Killed, Gas Fields HitFresh strikes were reported across the Middle East as Israel said it had taken out another senior Iranian official in the country's capital.
Read more »