It now appears that the Santa Fe shooter, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, was not politically motivated. The most likely explanation to date, is that he was stalking a girl with all the zeal of Republican Judge Roy Moore after a twelve year old. After months of refusing to date him and enduring aggressive advances from him, she confronted him him and humiliated him by rejecting him publically. She was the first student killed. Republicans are putting up fake Facebook profiles in his name, painting him as a Democrat.
In the first hours after the Texas school shooting that left at least ten dead Friday, online hoaxers moved quickly to spread a viral lie, creating fake Facebook accounts with the suspected shooter’s name and a doctored photo showing him wearing a "Hillary 2016" hat.
Several were swiftly flagged by users and deleted by the social network. But others rose rapidly in their place: Chris Sampson, a disinformation analyst for a counter-terrorism think tank, said he could see new fakes as they were being created and filled out with false information, including images linking the suspect to the liberal group Antifa.
It has become a familiar pattern in the all-too-common aftermath of American school shootings: A barrage of online misinformation, seemingly designed to cloud the truth or win political points.
But some social-media watchers said they were still surprised at the speed with which the Santa Fe shooting descended into information warfare. Sampson said he watched the clock after the suspect was first named by police to see how long it would take for a fake Facebook account to be created in his name: less than 20 minutes… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <San Francisco Chronicle>
Republicans are desperate to create an appearance of false equivalence to marginalize the many Republican terrorists that have murdered innocents.
With Facebook, the only way to win is not to play!
RESIST THE REPUBLICAN REICH!!
12 Responses to “Facebook Fakes”
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Much gratitude to the Chronicle for getting on top of this. Other than that, I’m not sure there’s a lot to say.
Good to know.
If Republicans are so proud of themselves, why must they lie and say he was a liberal? Quite honestly, it’s a low blow when you have to stoop this damn low. imho.
*Joanne: pretty picture!
Thanks. It’s one of my favorites too – it’s a repeat though. I’ve been repeating lately more often than not. Ah, well.
Just another reason to avoid Facebook like Chernobyl!
As a proud “Never-Belonged-to-Facebook” person, my question:
When Is Facebook Going To Permanently Solve This Problem?
I think the toothpaste is out of the tube on this problem. If Facebook were to voluntarily implode, either one of the already existing social media sites would take its place, or a new one would. Do you know of a way to remove from the brain cells of all RWNJ’s the knowledge of how to forge a fake profile? I certainly don’t. That’s not to say they couldn’t do better. But their strengths are in programming skills, and the strengths needed to do better are all skills related to being a human being.
Facebook will solve the problem only when and if they could make more profit by solving it than they currently make by having it.
The scariest thing about it: “It seemed this time like they were more ready for this,” [Sampson] said. “Like someone just couldn’t wait to do it.”
If that is true, Facebook’s defence that they have 10,000 people looking out for fake sites is ??. They don’t use people to capture your likes and dislikes to swamp you with “dedicated” advertising to “better serve you”, they use very smart algorithms. If they’d have their smart software designers among those 10,000 adapt the software of those algorithms to catch out fake sites popping up in response to the news of the day, they would filter out most of them before the bots and stupid people make them go viral.
Another “catch me if you can” scenario. If the perpetrators can be identified, they should be charged with identity theft and using that theft for nefarious reasons.
From what I have read, the first person killed was a girl who had spurned the shooter’s advances. Then he turned the guns on others. This is not a right vs left incident but more of a mental health issue. Of course the right would like to drum up business to keep the gun rights people and the NRA happy, which means the voting and money flowing their way.
While I take your point about right v. left, don’t forget that the “Men’s Rights” movement made up of (so they say) “Incels” (involuntary celibates” who get turned down for sex is a movement on the right, encouraging the far-right “value” of misogyny. Granted that this segment of the right may be milking the idea of sexual humiliation for all that it is worth and more … I don’t feel the right wing influence here can be discounted just because sex was involved. (Or possibly involved. That’s not proven.)
Thanks all. OGIM Hugs!
So glad i never joined,
