Sharing Disinformation Hurts Real People

Sharing disinformation, even with caveats, can lead to serious harm.

This is one of the big takeaways for me after reading Jessica Contrera's Dec. 16 long form essay in The Washington Post, "A QAnon con: How the viral Wayfair sex trafficking lie hurt real kids."

Contrera writes about people whose lives were affected by untrue conspiracies spread online. One of these is Samara Duplessis, whose photo went viral on the internet in 2020 when she was only 13. The conspiracy claimed that online furniture store Wayfair was selling her as a sex slave through an ad for a pillow also named "Duplessis."

"Do the research," is a common response of conspiracists, but they rarely take that same advice. If the people who started this disinformation campaign had only done the research they would've known that Duplessis was reported missing after she ran away from home but returned after 48 hours and was safe at home. This was all public record but the viral posts relied upon old news reports that hadn't been updated.

The Wayfair conspiracy was spread through QAnon, but a lot of people who helped spread this disinformation were not QAnon supporters, unwittingly promoting a QAnon conspiracy.

I recall this same thing happening during last year's "Plandemic" hoax. In May, this 26-minute video went viral, especially on Facebook, spreading lies about COVID-19 vaccines and mask wearing. Some people continue to believe that disinformation today, despite the copious evidence on the effectiveness of masks and vaccines.

In my own Facebook feed, the people sharing the video were not QAnoners or the types of people who generally spread conspiracies. Often, rather than claiming to believe it, they shared it with messages like "interesting," "could this be true?" or "decide for yourself." The caveats may have been to avoid responsibility for the negative consequences of sharing disinformation. Hitting that share button is so easy. "Who could it hurt," they may have thought. But here's the problem: Even with the caveats, they were helping spread disinformation — disinformation that hurts real people.

To understand this, read the whole thing. Read about how a viral hoax upended the lives of Samara Duplessis and others, and how the organizations actually doing something about sex trafficking have to spend their resources debunking hoaxes rather than helping people, people who can't reach their hotline because they get so many calls about the Wayfair conspiracy. Read about how these conspiracies led Rosanne Boyland to her death at the Capitol on January 6, and Elizabeth Corliss to attempt murder and Liliana Carrillo to murder their own children.

And let us all commit to being more careful about what we share online.