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In this Bellingcat investigation, Robert Evans ( @iwriteOK) lays out how a network of 'fake news' websites and disinformation brokers spread race hatred through articles. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/04/03/how-coronavirus-disinformation-gets-past-social-media-moderators/
In late January, the de-platformed fake news site ZeroHedge published an investigation that blamed a single scientist studying bats for the coronavirus outbreak. It did not spread widely. But two days earlier a Republican Congressman tweeted out an even more insidious fake story:
The root of the story is a shady former Israeli military operative, who spoke to the Daily Mail on January 23rd and warned that the Coronavirus might be an escaped bioweapon. The story got picked up by other right-wing fake news sources, like the Washington Times.
Over the course of about a week, these baseless bioweapon accusations were churned by the fever swamps of the online far-right. They mutated further. Soon Alex Jones was claiming the Coronavirus outbreak as a Chinese military attack on the U.S.
As the myth of the Coronavirus as a bioweapon spread and evolved, sympathetic figures who still have social media accounts pushed the agenda that Chinese people are to blame for the virus. Some of them carefully dogwhistle about bioweapons to their followers.
Social media continues to help these conspiracy theories and others like them to spread, with different layers of disinformation brokers riding up to the line without getting banned. All contribute to skyrocketing levels of violence against Asian-Americans https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/490373-attacks-on-asian-americans-at-about-100-per-day-due-to
You can read more about it all here, in our full investigation. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/04/03/how-coronavirus-disinformation-gets-past-social-media-moderators/
