Month: October 2023

A misleadingly captioned Arma 3 video shared on X now sports a "context" note on its real origins. (credit: X / Arma 3)

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.

Examples of this trend are not hard to come by. A 22-second clip on X garnered over 10.4 million views as footage of "Israeli helicopters getting smashed." But the clip was originally posted as a YouTube short on October 3, where it was correctly labeled as Arma footage. That didn't stop that same clip from spreading widely among Indian and Turkish Facebook users.

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.

Enlarge (credit: LWA via Getty Images)

A world-first trial of a gene therapy to cure a form of deafness has begun, potentially heralding a revolution in the treatment of hearing loss.

Up to 18 children from the UK, Spain, and the US are being recruited to the study, which aims to transform treatment of auditory neuropathy, a condition caused by the disruption of nerve impulses traveling from the inner ear to the brain.

Participants will be monitored for five years to gauge whether their hearing improves, with initial results expected to be published next February.

Enlarge (credit: Anadolu Agency / Contributor | Anadolu)

YouTube has removed one video and stopped monetizing YouTube influencer Cynthia G's channel after finding that the account repeatedly violated YouTube policies by posting videos over the past two years that accumulated tens of thousands of views by calling for Black abortions.

The decision came after an Ars reader asked Ars to investigate why these videos do not violate YouTube's community guidelines.

The video that YouTube removed was titled "If Aborting Black Males Isn't The Solution, What Is?" It was posted in November 2021 and, as of last week, still qualified for ad monetization. In the video, Cynthia G said that "a lot of people" considered the "solution" to be "something horrible that is genocidal" and provided a racist justification, saying that the only way to counter Black male violence is to "eliminate" Black men.