A few weeks ago, I discussed the mostly innocent spreading of misinformation through jokes and satire. A person on Mastodon said I should have called them lies, but a lie means intent to deceive. A lot of widespread claims start without malice. That seems to have been the case with the story of Haitian immigrants stealing and eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio. It now appears to have started with a Facebook post that posted a garbled version of a neighbor’s claim without expecting anything significant to come of it. Others picked it up, embellishing it from vague stories they’d heard or from their imagination. Another source was claims of immigrants poaching on waterfowl, which may or may not have been true but is in a far different category from killing pets.
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