Fake news knows no boundaries, as we see this week.
- That didn’t take long. The rumors and conspiracy theories about the appalling elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, started just as soon as bullets stopped flying. Before authorities had even identified the shooter, there was wild speculation that he was an illegal immigrant, that he was on the run from the Border Patrol, that he was wanted for murder in El Salvador, that he was transgender, or maybe all of those things. Right-wing conspiracist Arizona congressperson Paul Gosar, for his part, tweeted, “It’s a transsexual leftist illegal alien named Salvatore Ramos.” (He also spelled the shooter’s name wrong.) Then there were the unhinged and unfounded claims that the whole thing was a false flag operation staged by the U.S. government, for some unfathomable reason. It’s sad and somewhat disgusting that churning out the fake news is one of the first things that happens after such a tragedy. The Associated Press has the story.
- A new report reveals that a massive Russian botnet is capable of manipulating trends on social media on a “massive scale.” Read about it in Gizmodo.
- While we’re on Russia, New Yorker magazine has an in-depth article on Vladimir Putin’s massive state-run propaganda machine, and how it completely controls what Russian citizens see and hear. Read the article here.
- Apparently some Republican politicians are either extremely dumb or extremely gullible—or maybe both. After some jokester tweeted that, because of inflation, Costco was upping the price on its food court hot dogs by a dollar, the official Twitter account of the House GOP conference retweeted the announcement, adding that “#Bidenflation comes for everything.” The news, of course, was completely fake; Costco is still charging only $1.50 for a dog and a drink, which is a really good bargain. Salon has the story.
- For those of you concerned about trans people somehow taking over the country, no, Kellogg’s did not announce that Rice Krispies mascot Pop is now a trans woman. Rest assured, Pop, along with his krispie colleagues Snap and Crackle, is still some kind of elfin creature of vaguely male gender that likes to splash around in people’s cereal bowls. The traditional American way of life is safe—for the moment. Snopes does the usual debunking.
This Week in Fake News 