Racist Twitter Trolls Pose as Houston Looters
Racist Twitter Trolls Pose as Houston Looters
Amidst devastating flooding in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, fake Twitter accounts were used sow fear and racial hatred.
By David Emery Sep 1st, 2017
The Houston Police Department says very little looting occurred during the first week of flooding in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, citing a total of 18 arrests in the nation’s fourth-largest city as of 1 September 2017. You might not have received that impression if you’re a heavy Twitter user, however, thanks to the proliferation of dozens of tweets hashtagged #HarveyLootCrew threatening widespread looting and purporting to prove that a great deal of looting had already taken place.
A series of tweets from the accounts (since deleted) of “Jamaal Williams” (@RUthlessFCB) and “Jayrome Williams” (@BrotherTooTurnt), for example, spoke of looting white neighborhoods and “racist Trump supporters”:
Similar tweets issued from other accounts that in many cases were only days or weeks old. The tweets were taken at face value by some mainstream media outlets (including Click2Houston), as well as by several right-leaning blogs such as Pacific Pundit, DC Clothesline, and Think Americana, with the latter using them as the basis for a report stating that “far leftists promote looting of homes and businesses of only Trump supporters”.
What we found when we looked at the tweets carefully, however, was that all of them were fake, originating from troll accounts set up under assumed identities. None of the photos depict anything that actually took place in Houston, much less in 2017.
http://www.snopes.com/2017/09/01/harvey-looting-troll-tweets/
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