Thousands of miles away from the conflict, American social media feeds are filled with photos and videos from Israel and the Gaza Strip.
But the changing online landscape is making it tougher to figure out what's true, and what's not.
The videos and even information coming out of the Middle East are plenty horrifying, but not everything gaining traction online is entirely true.
This week, a fake white house press release claimed the Biden Administration was sending $8 billion in aid to Israel. The release was not real.
"Generally speaking, any kind of major crisis creates a sense of uncertainty and people build that uncertainty with clickbait," Dr. Brian Spitzberg says. Spitzberg is a professor in the communications school at San Diego State. He's done research on fake news, misinformation and disinformation.
"One of the reasons that misinformation, disinformation, and fake news spreads is it's designed to be clickable. It is designed to entice you into it," he adds.
Spitzberg says some of the fake information posters, whether they be individuals or from a government, are just looking to push their agenda.
"One of the things that that you should always check for is, does it is does anything about it look off? Does it intuitively feel too unbelievable? Does it look like it's dated? Are there fuzzy boundaries to the images?
Spitzberg says when you're trying to verify if something is real, you need to see who is reporting on it. Ideally, a mainstream media source, or multiple sources.
"I just do not trust a video unless I can find more than one source to verify that it seems to be a legitimate one."
Researcher Gizem Ceylan studied the psychology behind misinformation for her P.H.D. at the University of Southern California.
"We like, it when we get engagement from other people, we just like it," she says. Ceylan agrees that misinformation and outrageous claims generate clicks, and people enjoy getting that reaction. She believes the posters don't care if they're wrong because there isn't punishment from the sites, like X, that host the claims.
"People focus on the emotionality of the post, they don't think about whether (the) post is accurate. They don't care about it."
Another way to make sure images are real, or not pulled from another location is through a reverse Google image search, which will show other places the image may exist.
Spitzberg says most outrageous claims can be verified by searching if multiple mainstream media outlets are also reporting on it.
