The anonymous Telegram channel bearing witness for the world
“We hope these images and footage, which our guys risked their lives in many cases to obtain, will help"
Note: Today’s introduction discusses the massacres that took place in Israel last weekend. If you’re giving your mind and heart a break from that news cycle — which has only grown more tragic with the additional deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians — please skip straight to the links. You’ll find our usual whatnot and nonsense there.
I’m not going to describe the images posted to the Telegram channel South First Responders in any real detail. I’ve tried for several minutes, and the words just stall out; besides, you’ve already encountered photos and videos from the channel.
In the six days since it started, South First Responders has supplied graphic, unfiltered images of the massacres in Israel to The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Al Jazeera, The Times of Israel and Human Rights Watch, among other organizations. Content from the channel has also proliferated on X, Reddit and YouTube, often without attribution.
And yet, despite the ubiquity of these images — “nearly all conflict visuals are now just downstream from Telegram,” one investigator wrote on X — there is almost no public information about South First Responders or the people behind it. The Wall Street Journal calls them “a volunteer group.” The Australian says they have “no leadership or structure.” On Telegram, the channel’s organizer (or organizers?) explain only that its contents come from an anonymous network of first responders working at roughly half a dozen sites in the south of Israel; those responders have documented the carnage they found while searching for victims and survivors.
Even more chilling than those photos, however, are the troves of incidental videos first responders discovered in the wreckage of victims’ cars and homes: murders caught on security footage, on cellphones, in dashcam videos. Daily life now plays out in full view of these cameras. Most of the time, we forget about that. But then the unthinkable disrupts the banal — and somehow, I find myself watching the murder of a stranger from his perspective, from inside his car.
“We know that Israel and many others around the world are working now to piece together what happened in this unprecedented attack, which targeted dozens of civilian towns and villages,” South First Responders posted on October 12. “We hope these images and footage, which our guys risked their lives in many cases to obtain, will help with this.”
It should be obvious, I hope, that I’m not in a position to say if South First Responders are, in fact, first responders, or if all of their videos are legitimate. Certainly, mainstream news organizations and visual investigators have verified many of the videos posted to the channel, including surveillance footage of the entrance to Kibbutz Be’eri, which shows two men firing into a Mazda sedan at close range.
The Times, the Post and the Journal all published that video — which also strikes me as extraordinary, in and of itself. A mere 19 months ago, media commentators made much of the New York Times’ decision to publish a photo of a bloodied Ukrainian family on its front page. Those people were, notably, already dead.
But maybe the Times’ isn’t the gatekeeper it was even 19 months ago, in part because social platforms aren’t, either: Telegram and X, in particular, have apparently abdicated any role they might play in moderating information about the Israel-Hamas war. Shocking, graphic images of the bloodshed are now easily discoverable on both platforms — as well as Facebook and TikTok, to a lesser extent. News organizations traditionally weigh the news value of a graphic image against the discomfort it might cause viewers and the hurt it might cause the family of the deceased. But surely all this wall-to-wall social exposure shifts the Overton window on publishing acceptability.
For South First Responders, whoever they are, that exposure is a goal. The channel has grown increasingly explicit about its aims, debunking claims by Hamas officials and encouraging members to publicize “what is happening” in Israel. When I joined on Thursday, it had 25,000 members. By Friday evening, when I wrote this, they neared 40,000.
The channel’s most recent post promises to continue sharing new videos and images — confident that, even one week later, members of its network will continue finding them.
Why TikTok Videos on the Israel-Hamas War Have Drawn Billions of Views
Americans Rarely See the True Face of Israel’s Bombing of Gaza (2022)
If you read anything this weekend
“App, Lover, Muse: When Your AI Says She Loves You,” by Rob Price for Insider. I am endlessly fascinated by the ways in which people who fall in love with bots explain or justify the attraction: as a fantasy, as a technological stunt, as the type of affection you might otherwise feel “for a pet or a treasured possession.” This (sometimes uncomfortably!) intimate profile goes deep on that psychology — and on the “very particular type of love” AI provides: “unconditional and unquestioning.”
“How AI Reduces the World to Stereotypes,” by Victoria Turk for Rest of World. I somehow missed the Midjourney-generated Buzzfeed listicle that imagined a Barbie for each country — a predictable debacle that produced such gems as the submachine-gun-toting “South Sudan Barbie.” Fortunately for me, Rest of World followed up on that fiasco with this striking and alarming audit of how Midjourney represents national identity around the world. Worth the click for the pictures alone.
“This Is Not a Taylor Swift Profile,” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner for The New York Times Magazine. Fair warning: This piece does a few shticky magazine things I don’t understand and perhaps kind of hate. (If you read it, can you reply and explain the conceit involving the author’s aging son to me…?) But I would probably read any 8,500-word essay on Taylor Swift, especially one that meditates (however briefly!) on the new breed of extremely online, post-media celebrity Swift represents — you know, the kind that can turn down an 8,500-word magazine profile and think nothing of it.
“The First Guy to Break the Internet,” by Emma Madden for Narratively. Did Jason Russell “break the internet” — or did the internet break him? The 45-year-old co-founder of the controversial humanitarian group Invisible Children suffered a very public breakdown in March 2012, after Kony 2012 became a viral sensation. He still doesn’t sound all that well, either — a wiser man arguably would not tell a journalist that God spoke to him and compared him to Gandhi, or that he bought the domain whitesavior.me. Either way, though: Makes a good read!
👉 ICYMI: The most-clicked link from last week’s newsletter was this unexpectedly entertaining tale of peer-to-peer payment fraud on the app Zelle.
Classified ads
Join the best of the Internet by participating in the 28th Annual Webby Awards! Now honoring outstanding B2B Marketing in Advertising, PR & Media and Social and new Business categories in Video and Podcasts. Take advantage of best pricing, enter by the Early Entry Deadline - Friday October 27th.
Want to share your newsletter, podcast, job post or product with us? Click here to book a classified ad in the next edition.
Postscripts
The rise of “empathetic” AI and “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” groups. The fossil fuel industry’s big Fortnite play. How climate change complicates “Survivor”. Why Gen Z is obsessed with the Duolingo owl. Monica Lewinsky interviews Taylor Lorenz. I didn’t put fitness instructors on my “AI redundancy” Bingo card, but … someone else clearly did!
The Wall Street Journal on “girl math.” The Times checks in on Brand Twitter. The creepy facial recognition tool beloved by TikTok sleuths and new protections for child influencers. Bottomless brunch restaurants are charging “vomit fees.” New York’s Airbnb ban just caused a black market. Last but not least, a WILD stat: Almost 1 in 3 U.S.-bound small packages shipped from Temu or Shein.
That’s it for this week! Until the next one. Warmest virtual regards.
— Caitlin