After a young man killed three young girls aged between 6 and 9 and injured many more in the town of Soutport in England.

Soon later, information on Twitter, now known as X, surfaced online claiming that the perpetrator was a 17-year-old Muslim refugee. This was not true, as the murderer, Axel Rudakubana, was born in Britain and had lived in the country all his life in a family of Rwandan origin.

Nevertheless, the fake news had an impact. A tweet claiming the murderer was a Muslim amassed 27 million views, igniting unrest across the nation.

The source of this misinformation was the site Channel3 Now, which poses as an American news agency but is not. Channel3 Now mostly collects and publishes fake news and has roots tracing back to Russia. The site’s YouTube channel, launched 12 years ago, originally featured videos in Russian from the city of Izhevsk. In 2019, this changed to English-language content about the Middle East.

Channel3 Now picked up a tweet by Bernie Spofforth, known for spreading conspiracy theories. Although Spofforth deleted his tweet almost immediately, Channel3 Now managed to share it and did not remove it. Channel3 Now became the source from which the misinformation spread through social networks and into other media. Leaders of the English Defence League also propagated it.

The resulting riots are still ongoing in various cities across the UK. Despite the fake news being debunked long ago, the riots continue. Local police are urging people not to participate, as civilians, local businesses, public places, and police officers are suffering, with several officers already injured.

In essence, Russian fake news have sparked large-scale riots across the UK, demonstrating the power of this type of weapon.

54 points

Even if the murderer had been a Muslim and/or refugee, that would not have justified the violence used.

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45 points

The far right is way too easy to influence.

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18 points

Everybody are. You would like to think that it’s only “them”, but sad truth is, people are just easy to manipulate.

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23 points

Everyone can be manipulated. People who want to be outside of every norm are more easy to manipulate and the far right belongs to those groups.

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15 points

I think it would be quite difficult to persuade me I can solve problems by burning down a Citizens Advice centre.

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3 points
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When acting in a group, it is easy to turn people into a mob. So all the propaganda has to do, is get people to go on the streets and have one or two shitheads starting something. I don’t think many of the rioters went out that day with the explicit goal to burn the centre down. Maybe some had the goal to set something on fire, or smash something, but i doubt it to be aimed at this specific place beforehand.

In other words destabilizing propaganda just needs to start something without it having to be anything specific.

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5 points

Yeah, the Kremlin supports extremest politics of many flavors. The George Floyd riots are a good example of something similar happening on the left.

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2 points

After reading the article i thought about how legit united24media probably is.

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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3 points
Deleted by creator
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-7 points

Blaming foreign influence for our problems is what got us here.

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0 points

Did you read the article?

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1 point

Yes. It highlights Bonnie Spofforth as a source - a domestic source. Shifting the blame to Russia shifts the responsibility and perpetuates the domestic xenophobia that I would argue is much more responsible than Russia, or any outside source.

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-1 points

How so? I don’t see it.

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30 points
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Why are big media sites not accountable for Missinformation of their users? Apparently it’s not a problem to find and block copyright violations on YouTube and ban repeat offenders when Hollywood lawyers knock on the door…

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7 points

The one harms profit, the other generates it. Copyright holders will go after the Platforms consistently. However there it also seems to be mostly a matter of size and legal threat, rather than veracity of the copyright claim.

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