Steve Helber/AP

Days after helping launch a clearly false claim about vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, a disinformation peddler with a huge platform has disappeared from X.

The “Black Insurrectionist” profile began claiming last week that he’d been in touch with a former student of Walz who baselessly alleged the Minnesota governor sexually abused him years ago when he was a teacher and football coach. The now-missing account, which posted under the name @Docnetyoutube, has a documented history of promoting fake stories. But even with his profile gone, the seeds of the lie had already been sown and spread across the conspiracy ecosystem, driven by right-wing activists and self-styled conservative journalists.

“If it’s all a big lie, all a big hoax, that’s cool.”

The @Docnetyoutube account seems to have been deleted sometime on the evening of Thursday, October 17. It’s unclear if the user deleted the account or the company did: under Elon Musk’s ownership, X no longer responds to journalists and could not be reached for........

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