Providence, RI (AP) – Now it can be as predictable as thoughts and prayers: many shootings are dead, and wild conspiracy theories and misinformation about the murder will soon follow.
Then it happened to Sandy Hook So Park after a shooting at an Orlando nightclub and a deadly bombing earlier this month. Buffalo shop. On Tuesday, in downtown Walde, Texas, hours after the school shooting, another rash began as internet users spread baseless complaints. Men called guns And the possible reasons he.
Flawless allegations that the attacker was an immigrant or transgender living illegally in the United States quickly surfaced on Twitter, Reddit and other social media platforms. They were accompanied by familiar conspiracy theories suggesting that the whole shooting took place somehow.
The allegations highlight broader problems of racism and intolerance to transgender people and an attempt to blame the hunt on minorities who are already experiencing higher rates. Online Harassment And I Hate Crimes According to disinformation expert Jaime Longoria.
“It’s a tactic that serves two purposes: it avoids seriously discussing the issue (of gun violence) and it hurts people who don’t want to face the truth,” said Longoria, the director. Research the Disinfo Defense League, a non-profit organization working to combat racist disinformation.
Within hours after the hunt, the virus spread of posts falsely stating that a gunman was illegally living in the country, with several users adding jewelry, including that he was a “border patrol fugitive.” .
“He was an illegal alien wanted for murder in El Salvador,” he read a tweet he liked and re -sent it a hundred times. “It was blood on Biden’s hands and it shouldn’t have happened.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told a press conference Tuesday that the man authorities said the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was a U.S. citizen.
Some social media users take pictures of innocent internet users to falsely identify them as armed and claim they are transgender. On the online message board, 4Chan users freely shared photos and discussed a plan to have a transgender gunman, with no evidence of it.
One of the Twitter posts, which has since been deleted, showed a photo of a trans woman with a green bottle in her mouth, staring at the camera, with headphones hanging over her ear.
“Breakthrough news: the shooter’s identity has been revealed,” the user said, adding that the shooter was a Femboy on YouTube.
None of this is true. The photo actually depicts a 22-year-old trans woman named Sabrina who lives in New York. Sabrina, who asked not to disclose her last name out of confidentiality, confirmed to The Associated Press that the photo belonged to her and also said it was not linked to an alleged YouTube account.
Sabrina said she received insulting responses on social media, specifically messages saying it was a hunt. He responded to a series of posts spreading the photo with false identification and requested that the posts be deleted.
“The whole trial was just as horrible,” Sabrina told The Associated Press.
Another widely spread photo showed a transgender woman wearing a Coca-Cola T-shirt and black skirt. The second photo showed the same woman wearing a black NASA T-shirt with a red skirt. Even these photos don’t show a shooter: they use Reddit’s Sam, who confirmed his identity to the AP on Wednesday. AP does not use Sam’s last name to protect his privacy.
“I’m not, I don’t live in Texas,” Sam wrote in a Reddit post.
Authorities have not released any information about the sexuality or gender identity of the perpetrator.
Arizona Congressman Paul Gossar makes the same baseless allegations about Ramos in a deleted tweet that also misspelled his name. “This is an illegal left-wing transsexual foreigner named Salvatore Ramos,” Gossar wrote Tuesday night.
Gossar’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
In some cases, misinformation about the mass hunt or other events is spread by kindly social media users trying to help. In other cases, it may be the work of graffiti artists trying to start raising fake funds or paying attention to their website or organization.
Then the trolls seem to be doing that for fun.
According to the founder and CEO of digital detective consultancy Memetica, Fringe’s online communities, including 4chan, often use mass hunting and other tragedies to cause confusion, public trolls, and evil narratives.
“It’s very focused and focused for them to deal with these types of incidents and influence what the real conversation really is,” Decker said. “It’s a nihilistic desire to prove oneself by successfully dragging society into these types of communities. So if you can run a campaign that leads to a similar result, you gain some credibility in the group.” .
For companies that carry out many malicious online attacks, false accusations lead to fears of further discrimination and violence.
Something as harmless as a transphobic comment on social media can trigger an act of violence against a transgender person, says Jaden Janack, a doctoral student at the University of Texas and a junior researcher at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies.
“These kids and teens who were killed yesterday are just alive,” Janak said Wednesday. “They didn’t know it was their last day yesterday. And like trans people, this is what we always fear ”.
Report by Svensson from Seattle. Associated Press authors Angelo Fichera and Karena Fan contributed to this report.
Source: Huffpost
