I just thought about the fact that now, in the time of social media, you constantly see footage of the current ongoing wars. Scrolling through my feed constantly see images and videos form Israel and Ukraine. And other than in older wars, the footage is not only carefully crafted propaganda, but also things normal soldiers shot on their phones. So the question came up which impact this new source of intel has on the actual ongoing combat. How many people have died because of social media posts? Have there been IRL stream snipes?
you’ll have to forgive me for being short on sources off the top of my head (and I don’t care enough to go looking for them again) but I can remember a few different instances of this happening in recent memory. One being a fitness tracking app showing soldiers doing laps around the perimeter of a secret military base, another being either Russians or Ukrainians (probably Russians) being morons with their smartphones and getting an airstrike called on them for it. I recall, also, that (I think) ISIS once posted a video of a training camp and within a couple days 4chan had identified the location of it based on the geographical features shown and got it bombed.
I don’t care enough to go find the sources, this is just what I remember reading about, someone who gives more of a fuck will have to verify for me; but in short: yes. Perhaps not exactly “stream sniping” in the sense of actively livestreaming your position as an attack comes in, but certainly, modern technology has made it easier than ever for your OPSEC to be absolute utter dogshit.