In the immediate aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting, people turned to Facebook and Google, looking for news about what happened and, in some cases, updates about their friends and loved ones in the area.
What they were presented with, in some cases, was misinformation.
Perhaps the most egregious strain of misinformation took hold after far-right trolls gathered on 4chan, a forum in which individuals are permitted to post almost anything anonymously, and, through some amateur online sleuthing, misidentified the shooter. The false claim spread quickly on the Internet.
The Gateway Pundit, a far-right website, published a story declaring that the person 4chan had named was the culprit. It described him as someone thought to be “a Democrat who liked Rachel Maddow, MoveOn.org, and associated with the anti-Trump army.” (The Gateway Pundit later deleted the story. Its White House correspondent, Lucian Wintrich, told CNN the website removed the story soon after it was posted, and that it regretted the error.) – READ MORE
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