Arab OSINT platform debunks Dutch 'earthquake forecaster'

An Arab open-source intelligence platform has published a takedown of a Dutch self-styled earthquake expert who gained a huge following on Twitter for 'predicting' earthquakes.

Frank Hoogerbeets gained attention on social media after a tweet a few days before the Turkey-Syria earthquake on 6 February that said a quake would strike the Levant region "sooner or later".

The tweet provoked anger among some social media users in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, who said governments should have acted and protected people. Some 50,00o people across Syria and Turkey died as a result of the devastating quake.

Seismological experts were quick to dismiss Hoogerbeets' tweet, saying that earthquakes simply could not be predicted.

Even so, Turkish media continues to be rife with reports asking when the next major earthquake will hit the country - despite government promises to crack down on misinformation - and Hoogerbeets' profile on Twitter has continued to grow, now boasting more than one million followers.

Eekad, which claims to be the Arab world's first open-source intelligence (OSINT) platform, said Monday that part of Hoogerbeets' apparent success in predicting quakes came from the sheer volume of warning tweets he posted for parts of the world already prone to earthquakes.

The platform called Hoogerbeets' approach "a sort of game of probabilities".

It also listed a series of the self-styled expert's earthquake predictions that did not come true.

To help combat misinformation, Twitter has added a disclaimer to tweets from Hoogerbeets and others who claim to be able to predict earthquakes.