Unfounded claims that the gunman was an immigrant living in the U.S. illegally, or transgender, quickly emerged on Twitter, Reddit and other social media platforms.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — By now it's as predictable as the calls for thoughts and prayers: A mass shooting leaves many dead, and wild conspiracy theories and misinformation about the carnage soon follow.
People are also reading… "It's a tactic that serves two purposes: It avoids real conversations about the issue , and it gives people who don't want to face reality a patsy, it gives them someone to blame," said Longoria, director of research at the Disinfo Defense League, a non-profit that works to fight racist misinformation.
Other social media users seized on images of innocent internet users to falsely identify them as the gunman and claim he was transgender. On the online message board 4Chan, users liberally shared the photos and discussed a plan to label the gunman as transgender, without any evidence to back it up. None of that was true. The photo actually depicted a 22-year-old trans woman named Sabrina who lives in New York City. Sabrina, who requested her last name not be published due to privacy concerns, confirmed to The Associated Press that the photo was hers and also said she was not affiliated with the purported YouTube account.
"It is very intentional and deliberate for them in celebrating these types of incidents to also influence what the mainstream conversations actually are," Decker said."There's a nihilistic desire to prove oneself in these types of communities by successfully trolling the public. So if you are able to spearhead a campaign that leads to an outcome like this, you're gaining increased sort of in-group credibility.
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