How Three Election-Related Falsehoods Spread - The New York Times - 0 views
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The data showed how a single rumor pushing a false narrative could rapidly gain traction on Facebook and Twitter, generating tens of thousands of shares and comments. That has made the misinformation particularly hard for elections officials to fight.
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1. False claims of ballot “harvesting”This misinformation features the unproven assertion that ballots are being “harvested,” or collected and dropped off in bulk by unauthorized people.
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Representative Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, was falsely accused last month of being engaged in or connected to systematic illegal ballot harvesting.
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There were 3,959 public Facebook posts sharing this rumor, according to our analysis. Those posts generated 953,032 likes, comments and shares. Among those who shared the lie were two pro-Trump Facebook groups targeting Minnesota residents, as well as President Trump himself. At least 26,300 tweets also discussed the falsehood.
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2. False claims of mail-in ballots being dumped or shreddedMail-in ballots and related materials being tossed was another popular falsehood that election officials said they were hearing.
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Election officials also said people were confronting them with false assertions that antifa, the loose collection of left-wing activists, and Black Lives Matter protesters were coordinating riots at polling places across the country.Image
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He said in an email that his post was not a call for violence and that The New York Times should focus on “the key planners and financiers of all the rioting, arson, looting and murder” instead.