The machine's gone into overdrive trying to discredit that photo of the child on the floor.
[Thread]1/ This one is about the fake news claiming that a sick boy on the floor of a hospital in leeds was staged by his mother. We know the story is real, Dr Yvette Oade, chief medical officer at Leeds even apologised
2/ Firstly, the bots and sock puppet accounts are on the case on Twitter. As you can see, an identical tweet claiming the mother staged the photo was circulated on Twitter. It's literally copied and pasted, and the accounts are targeting it at various influencers
3/ Even more alarming is on Facebook. The exact same tweet is mentioned on dozens of fairly dodgy looking FB accounts. What's more, is that some of these posts are pasted into groups where they get liked and commented on, often by people who seem to believe it ... #bbcqt
4/ In one example, Jason Crosby pastes the tweet on the FB group for "Seaham Have Your Say". Seaham have your say is a page with 24k followers serving the North Eastern coastal town of Seaham. His post gets 91 comments and 26 shares.
5/ This one is even more egregious. The fake news post on the group March Cambridgeshire Free Discussion with 37k members has 235 comments and 28 shares. You can see the comments here, … - many call out the fakeness, others seem to believe it...
6/ It's interesting to note that in addition to targeting national level Facebook groups, a lot of these accounts are targeting influential local Facebook groups such as that of Cambridgeshire and Seaham. We know the role local FB groups are said to play in this election
7/ Meanwhile, back on Twitter, @Telegraph columnist @allisonpearson retweeted the copy and pasted tweet (of course in theory the text could still be genuine - but if so why is is circulated by weird sock puppets). Pearson 'presumes it is genuine'.
8/ It's 3.20 am here and I'm tired but I'll wager @allisonpearson is perhaps the most influential proponent of the faked floor theory. Stay tuned for her expose in the telegraph. I hope she interviewed the senior nursing sister! Night all ! …
9/ Last one. Interestingly @allisonpearson 'a retweet of what looks like a bot was then retweeted by @Fox_Claire (albeit with more caveats - not that it matters really) . Goes to show how potentially fake accounts and news can spread so insidious