You might have seen the viral thread about 128 fake NHS staff accounts to sockpuppet support for the government's handling of coronavirus?

The Guardian's dug into this -- issue is, the guy making accusations is only sharing evidence that 1x account exists https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/21/no-evidence-of-nhs-government-covid-bot-networks-says-twitter

Twitter say they "Currently do not see evidence of large-scale coordinated platform manipulation re. Covid-19, including suggested coordination associated with the UK govt.”

“As is standard, we will remove any pockets of smaller coordinated attempts to distort the conversation."

Paranoiacs in search of conspiracy (or RTs) will call this a coverup, but it's all quite cogent:
• There's evidence of 1x fake account
• Twitter have said they haven't yet seen evidence of anything 'large scale'.

Question is, how many of you RT'd John O'Connell's thread because it fit your personal narrative about Tories, Cummings etc, without really checking to see if it all added up?

I think people see "fake news" as something only elderly Fox News viewers are vulnerable to. Nope.

I admire Olivia Solon's reflection & transparency here. https://twitter.com/oliviasolon/status/1252371820428136455

NB I wasn't even claiming nothing was up.

I'm saying, "feelings aren't facts" -- and sharing unverified accusations because they "feel emotionally true" or validate your negative impression of Dominic Cummings

...is exactly how disinformation works.

Then @russss shared Full Fact's look at the situation, though, and it doesn't look good.

Data “not in a presentable form as yet”, and being “way too data-heavy for non-geeks” is such bullshit for a list of 128 Twitter handles... https://fullfact.org/online/evidence-network-fake-nhs-tweets/

So what we have is 1x dodgy account, now deleted.

Which could've been set up by anyone.

And was tweeting a parody of woke opinion for unknown purpose - maybe disinfo, maybe political point-scoring, maybe lulz.

With no evidence it said all the things O'Connell says it said.

Credit to @jimwaterson and @alexhern at the Guardian, and @flashboy at Full Fact, for taking a clear-eyed look at this.