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I traced a viral story about a 'stolen' election to just 12 original tweets

It's wild how a whole national panic can start from a handful of accounts, all repeating the same made-up claim. Has anyone else tried to track a hoax back to its actual source and been shocked by how small it was?
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3 Comments
brian_baker
Yeah, it's nuts. I once followed a rumor about a local store closing back to one angry Yelp review. The whole town was talking about it for weeks.
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anthonys60
anthonys601mo ago
Man, that's crazy but it tracks. I saw something similar with that weird story about birds not being real last year. It felt like everyone was talking about it, then someone found it basically came from one guy's joke tweet that got screen-shotted a thousand times. The internet just amplifies the smallest things until they feel huge.
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taylor_patel
But people still fell for it. Hard to call it just a small thing now.
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