The more technical an issue is, the easier it is to report it incorrectly. Today I noticed a widely retweeted claim that Parler had sent the email addresses of all its users in a message related to Kayne West’s acquisition of the service. Here it is:

The screenshot says, “Parler literally just sent a mass email about Kayne buying Parler but forgot to BCC everyone in the email chain. Anyone who uses Parler just got doxxed.” Parler did blunder, but the statement is seriously wrong and could panic many users.

Just by the way, I don’t use Parler and have no plans to. I’m just annoyed by false reporting and think it’s worth a blog post.

A Daily Caller article tells a different story. Daily Caller isn’t at the top of my list of unbiased news sites, but this piece looks plausible. It says:

Hours after the conservative social media platform Parler announced plans to be acquired by Kanye West, known legally as Ye, the company sent an email to hundreds of so-called VIP users that revealed their contact information.

The contact information of hundreds of “VIPs” were left visible to recipients of the message, which was obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, along with assurances that the company’s mission and customer service efforts were not going to be changed.

That’s a serious blunder, but it’s quantitatively different by a few orders of magnitude. Parler has millions of users. I can’t believe there’s an email server in the world that would process a message with over a million “To:” addresses. The claim on Twitter just isn’t plausible, yet people retweet it as if it were documented truth.

Always do a sanity test on a reported Internet “fact” before spreading it.