The fake ‘missing’ kids who went viral

The tweet begged the Internet for help: “My son was in the Manchester Arena today. He’s not picking up my call! Please help me.”

Attached was a picture of a teenager in a suit. More than 15,000 people retweeted this image, while others tried to help with advice.

But the viral image was not just an example of the Internet’s capacity for generosity after an attack like the one in Manchester. It was also a hoax. The teen pictured in the video was a YouTube personality, and he was nowhere near the concert.

The YouTuber, The Report of The Week, posted a video overnight clarifying that he was alive, and in the United States.

“This unfortunately was an effort done by various trolls and website users, certain website users, just to try and mislead the general public with fake news,” he said.

Unfortunately it wasn’t the only hoax. Collages of photos of supposedly missing people were all over Twitter in the hours after the attack, often reposted by well-meaning Twitter users.

One version of the collage, tweeted out by the Daily Mail and displayed by BuzzFeed, contained an image of the founder of the 4chan imageboard website, Chris Poole.

As often happens, attempts to debunk the viral photos — even by the people who were in them — were not getting quite as much traction online as the original hoaxes.

Other terror-related Internet hoaxes in the past have included one man whose face frequently appears as a “victim’s” after an attack, and a Sikh man who has been framed as a terrorist by Internet trolls multiple times.