Fake fires and bomb threats: why truth is worth paying for |
As Mexico roiled with fear and violence after the killing by US special forces of one of its most powerful drug cartel leaders, planes were set on fire on the tarmac at an airport as cathedrals burned in the tourist city of Puerto Vallarta.
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All through the country, vengeful gang members shot members of the public indiscriminately. It looked like a nation about to collapse.
Well that's the impression you would have had if social media was your window to the events.
The truth was quite different. Yes, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as "El Mencho", had been killed in a raid, but by the security forces of Mexico not the United States military.
There was no plane set alight at the Guadalajara airport, nor was Puerto Vallarta ablaze - although there were cars and buses torched in the chaos. Dozens were killed in firefights, but they were mostly members of the cartel or security forces.
The falsehoods that spawned during those chaotic hours in Mexico were ugly symptoms of an AI-infused, social-network-dominated information age.
Although rumours and falsehoods have been around as long as humans have communicated, today anyone can conjure up an image on their phone of a burning plane so realistic that people actually inside that Mexican airport were set running in panic.
It's unclear if the blame rests with internet shit-stirrers or whether it may have been the cartels themselves or even foreign actors responsible.
But so........