Facebook has removed a fake post from shooting suspect Robert Aaron Long after being circulated on Twitter late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning.
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Image of twitter and facebook logos on a screen.
The post appeared to have Long angered over China’s perceived role in the pandemic. The post stated that China was intentionally responsible for the 500,000 deaths of Americans and is actively engaging in hiding COVID-related plans in a Wuhan lab.
“China is engaged in a COVID coverup. They blocked our investigators from going to the lab in Wuhan and finding the truth about the experiments they were conducted there. If they were innocent, why block? China must be hiding something.” The fake post stated.
“They know how the Wuhan virus was created, and killing 500000 Americans was just part of their plan to secure global domination for the 21st century. ALL AMERICANS NEED TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST CHINA, NOW,” the post continues.
Facebook Communications Director Andy Stone has been squashing the spread of misinformation by directly commenting on shared posts via Twitter, citing that Facebook is working to delete the post. New York Times technology reporter Davey Alba pointed out on Twitter that the graphics were misaligned in the fake post.
Yes, this is a fake. https://t.co/noADBIiQWW
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) March 17, 2021
“We’ve confirmed that these screenshots are fake and we’re removing them from the platform for violating our policies,” a Facebook company spokesperson told Newsweek.
The fake post that shows Long making disparaging remarks about China were circulating several hours before a press conference held by Cherokee County Police.
Long was arrested on Tuesday around 8:30 p.m. after being the prime suspect of three attacks at massage parlors in Georgia. The shootings left eight people dead, six of whom were Asian American women. This leaves many to believe that the shootings were racially motivated, and the hashtag #StopAsianHate went viral on Wednesday.
During a press conference Wednesday morning, Cherokee County Chief Frank Reynolds said that Long denied the shootings at the spas were race-related. Instead, Reynolds said Long may have been motivated to stop his sex addiction.
“He made indicators that he has some issues, potentially sexual addiction, and may have frequented some of these places in the past,” Reynolds said, referring to the massage parlors.
Since the pandemic started, there has been a rise in Asian American harassment. A study released on Tuesday by Stop AAPI Hate cites there has been an uptick in violence against Asian Americans since March of 2020. Physical assault is the third largest category in their study, comprising 11.1 percent of total incidents. Women, in particular, are reporting hate incidents 2.3 times more than men.
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