Shayan Sardarizadeh Profile picture
Jul 30 4 tweets 3 min read Read on X
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". Image
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.
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https://www.merseyside.police.uk/news/merseyside/news/2024/july/statement-from-chief-constable-serena-kennedy-following-major-incident-in-southport/
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.
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Other viral posts referred to a widely-shared post on LinkedIn which claimed without evidence that "a migrant" was responsible for the attack.

The post on the left, one of the earliest mentioning "Ali Al-Shakati", racked up 1.2 million views before it was deleted by the user.
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More from @Shayan86

Jun 28
THREAD: Fact-checking the Trump-Biden CNN debate

Trump said that Biden "inherited no inflation" when he came into office.

Inflation stood at 1.4% in January 2021. It rose significantly during Biden's presidency, hitting a peak of 9.1% in 2022. It was 3.3% in May. Image
Biden claimed he's the only president in the last decade who doesn’t have "any troops dying anywhere in the world".

Three US troops were killed in a drone attack in Jordan in January.

During the Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021, 13 US troops were killed in a suicide attack.
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On abortion, Trump claimed that Biden wants to kill babies "in the ninth month and even after birth".

Killing a newborn is illegal in every US state.

Less than 1% of US abortions happen after 28 weeks, according to @CDCgov data. 93.5% of abortions happen before 13 weeks. https://www.cdc.gov/reproductive-health/data-statistics/abortion-surveillance-findings-reports.html#:~:text=Nearly%20all%20abortions%20in%202021,at%20%E2%89%A521%20weeks'%20gestation.
Read 5 tweets
Mar 26
Thread: Baltimore Bridge collapse misinformation

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.


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https://www.balticshipping.com/vessel/imo/9697428/seafarers
https://www.balticshipping.com/vessel/imo/9697428/seafarers
https://www.balticshipping.com/vessel/imo/9697428/seafarers
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".

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https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1772645740835131473?t=KyGydetZ7nFm_g9xFbly1w&s=19
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. Image
Read 4 tweets
Dec 20, 2023
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.

bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-…
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.


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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.
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https://www.jta.org/2013/07/10/lifestyle/secular-new-mother-feels-the-tuggings-of-her-jewish-past
Read 9 tweets
Dec 15, 2023
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.

bbc.co.uk/news/world-eur…
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.
Read 11 tweets
Nov 28, 2023
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. Image
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.
Image
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-abc-pizzagate/fact-check-fabricated-new-york-post-headline-on-ex-abc-journalist-idUSL1N39W381/
Read 4 tweets
Nov 20, 2023
Thread: Israel-Hamas war misinformation - Day 45

This video, viewed over 3 million times, claims to show an Israeli settler run over protesters.

The video's from 9 September, during a protest in Tel Aviv against the government's judicial reforms, and involves no settlers.

Image
https://twitter.com/kann_news/status/1700611691292062177
https://www.timesofisrael.com/car-plows-into-anti-overhaul-protesters-blocking-tel-aviv-highway-injuring-one/
This video claims to show two "terrorist" Palestinian journalists reporting near a rocket launcher.

The two are in fact Syrian journalists and the video is from 7 October. They reported retaliatory strikes against the Syrian government, after it killed 65 civilians in Idlib.

Image
https://twitter.com/Jamil_Alhasaan/status/1710712481104953640
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/31/northwest-syria-witnesses-most-intense-military-escalation-in-three-years
While Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital has been described by the WHO as a "death zone", the claim that all the premature babies there have died is inaccurate.

Two premature babies tragically died over the weekend, while 31 have now been transferred to an Emirati hospital in Rafah.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67466601
Read 4 tweets

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