A friend of mine posted something on Facebook (reposted from a local list in Arizona) claiming that two people were knocking on doors and beating up people, and one woman was in the hospital as a result. Pictures of the perpetrators and everything.
Something felt off, so I did a quick search on their names. And I found an article from some city in Texas where the same rumor had been circulating about that area. The article clarified that the two people had committed some crimes several years ago and were caught, tried, and convicted already.
So someone took one of these, changed the name of the area, and posted it to the local list. Why do people do this? A form of stochastic terrorism maybe?
Edit - I can’t find the post (I think my friend deleted it), but I did still have a tab open with the article about it.
Where I live I mostly see this done to support the narrative that immigrants are bad, that you can’t trust traditional media, and that you should be voting for the local fascist party.
Afaik the place names and date are not changed here, I suspect because that would make the perpetrators criminally liable. Instead they work by omission: take a many years old crime, don’t mention the date but instead post it on facebook as if it only recently happened, in that post question why the media isn’t mentioning this event or how the non-fascist politicians could let things get this much out of control, and then boost the post with help from others in the telegram group so that it reaches a wider audience.
I have noticed this as well. Back during the early facebook years, a “news” outlet would just generate content by posting stories like “Greenville ranked as the city with highest crime rate” every week or so.
Everybody on my facebook feed would go crazy saying things like “I always knew that town was dangerous, but to hear it outranks New York? TERRIFYING!”
Only issue is that this outlet would have 50 different URLs for the article, all giving a city in a different state (always an immigrant heavy suburb) and those articles would be appear around facebook and nobody would know the wiser.
It costs almost nothing for them to rewrite the world and your perspective about it. The granularity they are now capable of should give us pause.
I assume the people in the picture were “melanin enriched”? There you have your answer.
It’s a shame that you can’t know when seeing such posts if the person resharing it has good intentions or not. “Don’t open your door for strangers” is often good advice after all.
A friend of mine posted something on Facebook (reposted from a local list in Arizona) claiming that two people were knocking on doors and beating up people, and one woman was in the hospital as a result. Pictures of the perpetrators and everything.
Something felt off, so I did a quick search on their names. And I found an article from some city in Texas where the same rumor had been circulating about that area. The article clarified that the two people had committed some crimes several years ago and were caught, tried, and convicted already.
So someone took one of these, changed the name of the area, and posted it to the local list. Why do people do this? A form of stochastic terrorism maybe?
Edit - I can’t find the post (I think my friend deleted it), but I did still have a tab open with the article about it.
Where I live I mostly see this done to support the narrative that immigrants are bad, that you can’t trust traditional media, and that you should be voting for the local fascist party.
Afaik the place names and date are not changed here, I suspect because that would make the perpetrators criminally liable. Instead they work by omission: take a many years old crime, don’t mention the date but instead post it on facebook as if it only recently happened, in that post question why the media isn’t mentioning this event or how the non-fascist politicians could let things get this much out of control, and then boost the post with help from others in the telegram group so that it reaches a wider audience.
I have noticed this as well. Back during the early facebook years, a “news” outlet would just generate content by posting stories like “Greenville ranked as the city with highest crime rate” every week or so.
Everybody on my facebook feed would go crazy saying things like “I always knew that town was dangerous, but to hear it outranks New York? TERRIFYING!”
Only issue is that this outlet would have 50 different URLs for the article, all giving a city in a different state (always an immigrant heavy suburb) and those articles would be appear around facebook and nobody would know the wiser.
It costs almost nothing for them to rewrite the world and your perspective about it. The granularity they are now capable of should give us pause.
Interesting. This one didn’t include a link to an article, just fear mongering.
The person that posted it deleted it after my comment, I think. I’ll check.
I assume the people in the picture were “melanin enriched”? There you have your answer.
It’s a shame that you can’t know when seeing such posts if the person resharing it has good intentions or not. “Don’t open your door for strangers” is often good advice after all.