HOAXES ARISE
Internet trolls prey on the vulnerable
On Sunday night, a shooter opened fire on concertgoers 32 floors below a Mandalay Bay Resort hotel room in Las Vegas. Authorities say Stephen Paddock killed more than 50 and injured more than 500.
Within hours, Internet trolls and pranksters began churning out hoaxes, misinformation and lame jokes aimed at misleading the public, promoting their own platforms and laughing in the wake of tragedy.
Many of them worked, garnering hundreds of reposts on social media from possibly duped users. It all highlighted a gullibility and lack of judgment too common online: Social media users are far too trusting of random accounts that filter into their feeds.
Take this tweet with a photo from user @bloomoreos claiming his father is missing in Vegas. It went viral with 600-plus retweets but the photo was of adult film star Johnny Sins. The account later appeared to have been suspended.
“My son is missing in Mandalay Bay,” tweeted user @redevic- er. “Please RT I’m really worried.” It came with a photo apparently depicting “Brandon W. Kingsom.” More than 5,000 users reposted the tweet, prompting the user to advertise his Instagram account below it: “While y’all here follow me on Instagram!”
The Instagram account features a youth in skinny jeans posing moodily — no photos of “Brandon.” Twitter appears to have suspended the account but not before others noticed:
Other accounts circulated purported photos of the Las Vegas shooter that actually showed Sam Hyde, a comedian whose photos often resurface in hoaxes after shootings.
Another user claimed his brother was in the Mandalay Bay hotel and “doesn’t ask his cell phone.” According to Buzzfeed News, the man in the photo accompanying the claim is actually linked to the case of a teen murdered in Mexico.
And sometimes misinformation comes from non-anonymous users, too. Las Vegas-based commentator and “conservative warrior” Wayne Root claimed in the early hours of Monday that the shooting was a “clearly coordinated Muslim terror attack.”
He later criticized “liberal fools criticizing me 4 reporting what I hear DIRECT from police & credible news sources.”
Authorities later discredited Root’s account, claiming Paddock had no links to international terrorist groups.