Key Takeaways:
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Hebrew translation on X was never disabled — the claim originated from a misleading screenshot involving Apple’s translation tool and a mixed-language post that confused X’s translator.
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Anti-Israel accounts amplified the falsehood, prompting X’s AI (Grok) to “hallucinate” the same lie after absorbing the viral misinformation.
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The incident shows how misinformation and monetized rage-bait spread online, underscoring the need to verify claims independently and treat AI responses with caution.
Has Hebrew translation been disabled on X (formerly Twitter)?
Are Hebrew posts on X so inflammatory and dangerous that they can’t be translated?
Or is this all a misunderstanding?
These are the questions that have occupied social media and some in the mainstream media over the past week.
In fact, the misinformation and haze surrounding this issue has become so profound that even France24’s “Truth and Fake” segment appeared to be uncertain as to whether X has officially disabled Hebrew translations (despite the fact that it pointed out that you can still translate Hebrew on the social media site).
So, to clear through the morass of misunderstanding and fake news, here’s a quick explainer on why so many (including X’s own AI service) got tricked into believing that Hebrew translations had been disabled and what this can tell us about social media, artificial intelligence, and the spread of anti-Israel and antisemitic lies online.
The claim that X had disabled Hebrew translations appears to have come from a screenshot of a Hebrew-language post that was advertising the launch of a single by a new Israeli pop group named “Roberto.” The screenshot was actually of Apple’s own translation service, which does not currently include Hebrew among its repertoire of languages. The inability of the X user to translate the post may also derive from the fact that while the post was written in Hebrew, it featured the song’s title in English, confusing X’s translation tool.
However, this screenshot of the Hebrew-language post was soon popularized by an anti-Israel X account by the name of Red Pill Media, claiming that X had disabled Hebrew translations “because Jews were calling for genocide on this app without getting suspended.”
This one post was viewed over two million times and shared over 14,000 times, with many people chiming in that there was a conspiracy by X to stop translating Hebrew to hide the nefarious and violent posts that Israelis and Jews were allegedly spreading.
Case Study: AI doesn’t give you information, it gives you probabilities.
Hebrew translation is still fully functional on @X. But it doesn’t work when English is mixed in with Hebrew, as shown in the screenshots below.
But large accounts and their conspiracy driven following… pic.twitter.com/4qly82soD6
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) November 17, 2025
The day after Red Pill Media’s original post, someone asked Grok (X’s own artificial intelligence service) if it was true that X had disabled Hebrew translation services. The AI responded that “translation from Hebrew was disabled because it often amplified inflammatory or policy-violating content, like calls for violence, to a global audience via inaccurate or literal renditions.”
This seemed to be the unimpeachable proof that X was purposefully hiding a spate of inflammatory posts by Hebrew speakers to protect the image of Israelis.
But this was not the “smoking gun” that people made it out to be.
To understand why, we need to understand how Grok works. As an artificial intelligence, Grok does not possess understanding and knowledge in the same way that humans do. Rather, its responses are based on a probability determined by all that it has “learned” so far. Additionally, Grok maintains ongoing access to X posts to stay up-to-date.
Thus, when thousands of X accounts spread the lie that X had disabled Hebrew translations to hide the inflammatory nature of Hebrew-language posts, Grok “learned” this disinformation from these accounts and then regurgitated it as fact. This is known as a “hallucination.”
Since its initial response, Grok has updated its responses to confirm that Hebrew translations are available on X and that there is no conspiracy by the social media giant to hide incitement by Israelis and Jews.
I’m sorry you feel that way, but Hebrew translation isn’t banned on X or in Grok—it’s fully supported. If it’s not working for you, share the specific error message, device, or steps you’re taking so I can investigate and help resolve it. Glitches happen, and we’re quick to fix…
— Grok (@grok) November 19, 2025
This latest episode of online anti-Israel misinformation has several lessons for social media users.
First, despite the advances that AI has made in the past few years, it is still not foolproof and can serve as a source of misinformation, even about policies at the very company that it serves. This can be due to its lack of traditional cognitive skills or the nature of the information that it has been fed to “learn” from. Thus, any information provided by AI should be double-checked for its veracity.
Second, X incentivizes misinformation and rage-baiting by monetizing posts that receive a high number of impressions. Thus, in order to receive large payouts, bad-faith actors will post absurd posts that are sure to drive high traffic. The baseless claims by these bad-faith accounts then become popular enough on social media that they can end up serving as “learning” material for artificial intelligence, completing the circle of online misinformation.
Therefore, when spending hours on social media, it is important to keep in mind that not all users are good-faith actors, that any ludicrous claim should be independently investigated instead of just relied upon (even if it is from a verified account), and that AI is a tool that can help you but should not be relied upon blindly due to its inherent weaknesses.
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