Liberal Democrats leader Jo Swinson has warned the public to be wary of sharing misinformation after a story went viral that claimed she had abused squirrels.
Doctored images claiming to show an article on the Mirror’s website were shared thousands of times across Twitter and Facebook last week, including by a number of pro-Brexit and Brexit Party groups.
READ MORE: Lib Dems campaigning for Jo Swinson to be next PM
The false story, written by non-existant journalist “Wurrance Telephene”, claimed the Lib Dem leader was blasted by animal rights charities after “harrowing footage” was found on a private Facebook account.
Speaking to LBC today, she said: “This sort of fake news is surprising to me, now that I am the leader of a party. This isn’t the only one, there has been various other fake news story. Sometimes using the byline of an established journalist.
“There was one that used Peter Walker’s name from the Guardian and he had to go online to debunk it and say he never wrote it.
“But they’re quite sophisticated in that people believe them.
“I do think it’s worrying because it has echoes of what we’ve seen in other elections. Particularly when you think about fake news and the technological possibility for deep fakes, where videos can be faked.
“I think it’s very difficult to prevent the spread.”
Researchers at First Draft, a non-profit group fighting misinformation, found that the false story was originally circulated among anonymous pro-Labour accounts, confined to a fairly small section of Twitter.
However, on November 5 a Medium post appeared, pushing the same fake claims. It claimed to be written by a Miranda Joyce of the Milngavie Times, however neither the journalist nor the publisher exist, while the image purporting to show the author was actually a stock image.
The Medium post has since been removed.
The post received few interactions until it was shared by a Brexit Party account on November 14 with nearly 9,000 followers.
READ MORE: Danger, squirrel at large: number of Scots injured by animals on the rise
It then picked up more than 20,000 interactions across social media.
Posts promoting the story can still be found across both Twitter and Facebook, despite both social companies vowing to tackle misinformation on their platforms.
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