Fake news web sites spread conspiracy theories about Florida school shooting

Fake news web sites spread conspiracy theories about Florida school shooting

These were provided to me yesterday, by a friend, in a post that claimed the students appearing on TV in regards to the Florida school shooting were actually actors.




I replied that it seemed that photos of unknown origin and unknown time frame were being re-purposed for someone’s propaganda, which turns out to be the case.
The NY Daily News says these social media memes were a conspiracy theory pushed by conservative fake news sites InfoWars and Gateway Pundit.

Outlets such as InfoWars and the Gateway Pundit have reported that there are “questions swirling” over the media appearances of those who survived the attack on Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last Wednesday.
The conspiracy, which resulted in the firing of the aide to a Florida state congressman who believed it, says that survivors David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez are paid actors who “travel to various crisis when they happen.”

Source: Conspiracy that shooting survivors are ‘actors’ easily debunked – NY Daily News
These fake news stories would have gone nowhere – except for the friction-less platform of social media propaganda distribution.
These nonsense posts were shared on social media.
But it gets worse. Another fake news meme popped up alleging that all of the dead students have no birth certificates and this was a “false flag” operation. These posts went on for pages on Facebook. Are these from real people or bots designed to sow discord?
(I found one post from someone who used the same database to check for birth records of their own family members- and found they had none of their living relatives in this database, calling into question the accuracy of the database being used by these nut jobs. A genealogist tells me that birth records at places like the website these people say they used, usually mark birth records of living people as private, and are not made public until many years after they have died, for privacy reasons.)

Crap is alive and well on Facebook, an online service that has degenerated into a dangerous purveyor of bull shit. Facebook has lost its relevancy – and it is no longer a harmless amusement but a danger to society itself. The social media platform has become a platform for reckless behavior.


These are screen snapshots of actual Facebook search results.

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