Italy Braces for Fake News as Election Approaches
- 6 years ago
Italy Braces for Fake News as Election Approaches
In the summer of 2017, Aeronet News, a Czech news website
that has been linked to fake news in the past and that has a distinctly pro-Russia bent, published an article insinuating that Mr. Drahos had committed acts of pedophilia and that he had collaborated with the secret police in the 1980s.
When a photograph of the prime suspect was publicized, the selfie with Ms. Merkel, who had been under pressure for her open-door policy toward refugees, started circulating on social media —
but with Mr. Modamani falsely identified as one of the bombers.
Two months before the French presidential election of 2017, Bernard Barrier, who claimed to be a former employee of the French Ministry of Defense, posted a map
that he said showed the locations of clashes between immigrants and the police.
On the day in October that Catalan secessionists voted for independence from Spain, a Twitter account with the name Persian Rose shared a video
that claimed to show violence by the Spanish police against voters in Catalonia.
A few hours after a deadly terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge in London in March 2017, a post on Twitter accused
a woman wearing a hijab of paying "no mind to the terror attack" and of "casually" walking by a dying man.
#Merkel fait une selfie avec un IS_terrorist pic.twitter.com/Vnb3bKTHVR Mr. Modamani sued Facebook
in an attempt to prevent its users from further reposting the picture, but he lost the case.
In the summer of 2017, Aeronet News, a Czech news website
that has been linked to fake news in the past and that has a distinctly pro-Russia bent, published an article insinuating that Mr. Drahos had committed acts of pedophilia and that he had collaborated with the secret police in the 1980s.
When a photograph of the prime suspect was publicized, the selfie with Ms. Merkel, who had been under pressure for her open-door policy toward refugees, started circulating on social media —
but with Mr. Modamani falsely identified as one of the bombers.
Two months before the French presidential election of 2017, Bernard Barrier, who claimed to be a former employee of the French Ministry of Defense, posted a map
that he said showed the locations of clashes between immigrants and the police.
On the day in October that Catalan secessionists voted for independence from Spain, a Twitter account with the name Persian Rose shared a video
that claimed to show violence by the Spanish police against voters in Catalonia.
A few hours after a deadly terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge in London in March 2017, a post on Twitter accused
a woman wearing a hijab of paying "no mind to the terror attack" and of "casually" walking by a dying man.
#Merkel fait une selfie avec un IS_terrorist pic.twitter.com/Vnb3bKTHVR Mr. Modamani sued Facebook
in an attempt to prevent its users from further reposting the picture, but he lost the case.