WASHINGTON — Deadly mass shootings in the United States have fueled a torrent of online disinformation targeting an unlikely group: transgender people.
Before police identified the gunman who killed five people Monday at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, users on the fringe internet forum 4chan speculated that the shooter was transgender.
After a late-March shooting at an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, a former"RuPaul's Drag Race" contestant and transgender activist who goes by the name Miss Peppermint and is based in New York said she was shocked to see her name and photo above a tweet she never wrote. The disinformation that spread after the Nashville shooting came from"very online, right-wing troll accounts, who are always ready to capitalise on an emergency or a disaster," said Prof Heron Greenesmith, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates.
Twitter has seen a spike in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric since Mr Elon Musk's takeover of the company, according to a March report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate . Exacerbating the spread of disinformation is Twitter's updated verification policy, which no longer distinguishes between public figures and users who subscribe to Twitter Blue.
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