An unorthodox group of 7 users is now the most dominant news source for information about the Israel-Hamas war on X (formerly Twitter), according to a new report from the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. Dubbed the “New Elites” of X, the report found these users racked up 1.6 billion views on the platform in the first three days of the conflict, making them far more influential than traditional news outlets including the New York Times, CNN, and the BBC. Many of the accounts have been promoted by Elon Musk in the past.

The research comes amid a broader conversation about the influence of social media in a time of crisis. Immediately after the Hamas attacks, the platform was reportedly flooded with misinformation about the war, drawing criticism from regulators and calls for other platforms to fill the news void left in Musk’s wake. The University of Washington’s report was published the same day as a NewsGuard study which found that X’s blue-checked verified users produce 74% of misinformation on the platform, which then spreads to the rest of the internet.

Indeed, X’s New Elites are all verified users, and several have a reputation for posting misinformation, including @sentdefender, @spectatorindex, and @WarMonitors. According to the report, the New Elites tweet in a style that erases context, spreads disturbing imagery, and adds to the emotionally charged nature of discussions surrounding the situation in Gaza.

However, the researchers say the broader problem is a question about what counts as “news” in the modern social media landscape. “The issue here isn’t misinformation — though misinformation can be involved. The issue is what the news environment looks like,” said Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at the University of Washington and the report’s lead author. “There’s really two different visions of what that news environment should be. Our report shows that one of those visions has become dominant on X.”

Most of the new elites are accounts run by individual people. @Censoredmen, for example, primarily tweeted about misogynist internet star Andrew Tate before switching to news content. But others are full-blown media operations. The top-performing account is @Visegrad24, a Poland-based enterprise of about 12 people that grew to prominence tweeting about the war in Ukraine.

“I do think that there is a problem with the mainstream media maintaining absolute control on certain narratives,” Stefan Tompson, who started the Visegrad 24 account with his brother in 2020, told Gizmodo. Tompson, a PR strategist who got his start working on the “Leave” side of the Brexit campaign, said he’s preparing to launch a brand new media company with a team of journalists to build on Visegrad 24’s success. His newfound influence comes with an ironic respect for the traditional media he started out criticizing. “I understand there is a genuine threat if we do get something wrong,” he said. “It has real-life consequences. I look at that, and I sort of understand a lot of the regulations and limits and restraint around of a lot of the mainstream media.”

The news environment that dominates X isn’t necessarily what users are asking for. The top six traditional news accounts on X belong to the BBC, CNN, the New York Times, and Reuters. Collectively, those accounts have 298.1 million followers — nearly 100 times more than the New Elites, who together amount to just 3.2 million followers. In other words, the platform isn’t serving up the news content that users explicitly request when they hit the follow button.

But when you look at the engagement these accounts receive, the New Elites are winning by a mile. Together, the report found the top six traditional media outlets got 112 million views on Israel-Hamas news in the first three days of the conflict. The New Elites earned 1.6 billion views. Visegrad 24 generated 370 million views alone.

“Our sense, which I think is supported by the number of people who have followed traditional news sources there, is that is not the vision a lot of users of X had when they signed up,” Caulfield said.

For many, the Israel-Hamas conflict has been a wake-up call for the health of X’s news ecosystem. X CEO Linda Yaccarino maintains the platform is fighting to address the issue, but Musk has demonstrated it’s a problem he doesn’t take seriously. In September, for example, X disabled the option to report misinformation on the platform.

“If you look at all my posts, especially in the peak of the war, all of them have a source,” Mario Nawfal, the second most influential member of the report’s New Elite, told us. His account is also run by an entire team of people, and he’s one of the biggest stars on Musk’s revamped platform.

Nawfal, who rose to prominence with content about cryptocurrency, said he’s committed to accuracy and unbiased information. At the same time, he’s a controversial figure in his own right who’s been accused of shady business dealings in the past, something Nawfal categorically denies. He’s also been charged with cutting corners to juice his engagement on X, but Nawfal told Gizmodo most of his tweets come straight from established news outlets.