The woman behind an early Facebook post that helped spark baseless rumors about Haitians eating pets told NBC News that she feels for the immigrant community.
The woman behind an early Facebook post spreading a harmful and baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating local pets that helped thrust a small Ohio city into the national spotlight says she had no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and is now filled with regret and fear as a result of the ensuing fallout.
“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, told NBC News on Friday.
Lee recently posted on Facebook about a neighbor’s cat that went missing, adding that the neighbor told Lee she thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.
Newsguard, a media watchdog that monitors for misinformation online, found that Lee had been among the first people to publish a post to social media about the rumor, screenshots of which circulated online. The neighbor, Kimberly Newton, said she heard about the attack from a third party, NewsGuard reported.
You can believe what you want about human nature, but consider how well society would function if it was acceptable to make baseless accusations and act on them as if they were facts.
I do consider how well society functions, and I don’t think it is successful.
How is “the lady who made an extremely racist post online might be racist” a random accusation, exactly?
And so you’ll improve it by throwing around random accusations?
Looking back on my two previous posts in this thread, I have not accused any individual of anything. Nor do I think I can improve a human world specifically designed to hurt humans all by myself. All I can do is refrain from hurting others - this is not an action which, by itself, changes the moral behaviour of the majority.
You, in fact, are the one throwing an accusation. You might be doing this, ironically, out of a desire to improve the world. Feel free to ask me towards the end of the lifespan whether I have noticed a difference due to your efforts.
