Today's the biggest day yet for the UK QAnon movement. 15 "Save Our Children" rallies were held in London, Birmingham, Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Bristol, Dundee, Glasgow, Halifax, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle and Newport. Over 20 UK towns/cities have now had one of these rallies
The London one began early. They marched from Hyde Park towards Buckingham Palace and then Trafalgar Square. Once again, most of the people attending were women. The numbers were definitely smaller compared to the last two marches, probably because it was early in the morning
The London "Save Our Children" crowd then joined the bigger march against Covid-19 restrictions at Trafalgar Square, which was attended by hundreds. Kate Shemirani and Mark Steele (and a few others) spoke at the rally
Here's the one in Birmingham. Doesn't seem like it was attended by anything more than a few dozen people. Note the #WWG1WGA sign on the banner behind the lady speaking
Save Our Children gatherings in Newport and Manchester today. Once again, a few doezn seem to have attended. Interestingly, one person attending the Leeds rally was asking people whether they should avoid "the adrenochrome/pizzagate stuff" on their banners and signs
A video from the Glasgow rally. Glasgow is one of the cities that has hosted every single Save Our Children rally that's been scheduled there since August. If you saw one of these rallies in your town or city today, please send me a DM or email (in my bio)
For those who have not been following the UK QAnon movement, it was established in July off the back of a similar movement in the US. Two major series of nationwide rallies have so far been held, this is the third one. Q UK Facebook groups now have tens of thousands of members
Seems like the Newcastle rally was cancelled today because the organiser(s) did not turn up. All the other marches seem to have gone ahead as planned
Apparently these two ladies were the only ones who turned up at Newcastle, h/t @gkersplunkski
Looking at their banner, all the famous QAnon slogans are there: Adrenochrome, pizzagate, WWG1WGA, the alleged child abuse symbol, etc. One of the ladies is also wearing a Q shirt
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Immediately after the Southport attack, baseless rumours began spreading online.
The main source of rumours has been a report by an obscure US "news" website that falsely claims the suspect is an "asylum seeker" named "Ali Al-Shakati", who "arrived in the UK by boat last year".
Merseyside Police has confirmed that the suspect was born in Cardiff, and has yet to identify the 17-year-old.
The report also adds that the suspect was "on MI6 watch list", despite the fact that it is MI5, not MI6, that deals with domestic counter-terrorism cases.
The name "Ali Al-Shakati" has since been widely shared online in misleading posts viewed by millions.
Some other outlets, including Russia's RT news channel, have also reported this name, citing the US-based website.
Pro-Kremlin influencers claim the captain of the Dali ship is a Ukrainian.
But online records show a Ukrainian man was the Dali's captain from March to July 2016. The ship that hit the bridge reportedly had an all-Indian crew.
Claims by influencers such as Alex Jones and Andrew Tate that the Baltimore Bridge collapsed due to a "cyber-attack" have been viewed millions of times.
Maryland Governor Wes Moore has said the early investigation points to an accident, with "no evidence of a terrorist attack".
This video, viewed 1.4 million times, claims to show evidence of pre-installed explosives causing the Baltimore Bridge collapse.
What the video shows is not explosives, but most likely electrical wires catching sparks.
DC Weekly, a website founded by a former US Marine now living in Russia, has fuelled disinformation stories about Zelensky and Ukraine, including a fake story that he bought two luxury yachts with US aid money, later repeated by some members of Congress.
These are just a few of the disinformation stories published by DC Weekly about Zelensky and Ukraine recently.
They all follow the same pattern: an obscure YouTube video featuring false claims, an article on DC Weekly referring to that video, and viral posts on social media.
All of those articles featuing false claims about Zelensky and Ukraine are written by Jessica Devlin. According to DC Weekly, she's a "highly acclaimed journalist" from NYC.
Except, that's the image of author Judy Batalion. Jessica Devlin is a fake persona. She doesn't exist.
A vast Russian influence operation on TikTok involving 12,800 fake accounts spreading disinformation about the war in Ukraine to millions of users in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Israel and Ukraine, has been uncovered by BBC Verify and @DFRLab.
Back in the summer, this video, featuing an AI-generated voice, racked up millions of views on TikTok and later on Twitter.
It falsely accused Ukraine's former defence minister Oleksiy Reznikov and his daughter Anastasiya Shteinhauz of buying a a €7m villa in Cannes, France.
We debunked the viral video back in July. The villa seen in the video wasn't bought by Reznikov, and was actually up for sale.
So, @O_Rob1nson, @adkrobinson and I tried to find out more about the account that originally posted that video to TikTok.
The meme shared by Elon Musk about the pizzagate conspiracy theory is itself based on the completely false claim that James Gordon Meek, a journalist who recently pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography, had debunked pizzagate. Meek never reported on pizzagate.
The completely false claim that James Gordon Meek had debunked pizzagate was spread back in the summer by QAnon followers, like this blue tick account.
The New York Post has never published such a story about Meek. It's a totally fake image and a made up headline.
Elon Musk has once again fallen for a completely false claim, this time based on a fabricated New York Post headline pushed months ago by conspiracy theorists on his own platform.
If he'd done a simple check before tweeting, he'd have found out the whole thing was false.