White nationalist group posing as antifa called for violence on Twitter. (via NBCNews)
Two hashtags that trended worldwide on Twitter falsely claimed that there was a "cover-up" or a "blackout" of protests in Washington, D.C., overnight. Both appeared to insinuate that protesters have been silenced in some way, perhaps by a secret internet blackout.
Twitter says it has removed the trend from its "trending topics" section because of "coordinated attempts to disrupt the public conversation" around the protests. Twitter said it suspended several hundred accounts and is investigating the viral spread of the hashtag, which it said was boosted by "hundreds of spammy accounts." "We're taking action proactively on any coordinated attempts to disrupt the public conversation around this issue," a Twitter spokesperson said. The spokesperson said the company sometimes pulls down hashtags that violate the company's rules, like platform manipulation. "We want trends to promote healthy discussions on Twitter. This means that at times, we may prevent certain content from trending. These include trends that violate the, a nonprofit group monitoring worldwide internet access, found no indication of a mass-scale internet disruption in the Washington area overnight or in the last 48 hours."A lot of people are asking me about a possible #dcblackout. I've been out near the White House since 4 am and haven't experienced any outage," Victoria Sanchez, a reporter for WJLA, the local ABC affiliate, adding that her colleagues had posted multiple updates throughout the night. Many accounts tweeting the message had few to no followers. The same messages were also posted on Reddit and 4chan late Sunday. The posts pushing the #DCBlackout hashtag peaked in popularity around 12:30 a.m. ET Monday.boosted by bots and hacked accounts claimed that #DCBlackout is a misinformation campaign. The same message was tweeted verbatim by multiple accounts. "Yeah...... as someone seeing #dcblackout trending, who lives and works in the DC metro area, and who has friends telecommuting into DC rn..... This hashtag looks like misinformation," read the tweet, which was posted hundreds of times. Some accounts had few to no followers, while other tweets were posted by users who claim to have been hacked. One verified Twitter user, Jason Elia, said his account was hacked to tweet the message. Elia lives in Oklahoma City and said he wouldn't go to Washington "unless they build an In-N-Out there." He said he has since changed his password. The goal of the hashtag seems to be to sow confusion and fear during a chaotic time and to push the #DCBlackout hashtag to the front page of Twitter, where all users would at least glance at the disinformation. Josh Russell, an independent bot researcher who identifies foreign and domestic hacking and trolling operations, said events like the weekend's protests are ripe for this kind of platform manipulation. "Any large 'online' event is going to have these types of things happen. Every bad actor that sees the opportunity to create some panic is going to leverage the situation to do so. It's nothing new," Russell said. Off Twitter, viral text messages of screenshots of doctored tweets have circulated throughout the country. Some of the false text messages claim that extremist groups are plotting to move into residential areas this week., which go undetected on mainstream platforms like Facebook and Twitter and can spread like wildfire without moderation. Similar "hidden viral" text messages went viral at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., with messages claiming that the institution of martial law was imminent, vaguely citing friends or co-workers.were boosted by Chinese disinformation agents to spread panic. Russell said hostile foreign governments frequently "look at opportunities to make it seem as though there is an infrastructure failure" during times of crisis. "This is a common thing for foreign disinformation agents," Russell said. "They would be trying to get people to believe that things are much worse on the ground than they are."
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