A digitally manipulated, phony letter referring to a “Democratic Play book” and attributed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been circulating online, contributing to partisan rancor following the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Online posts falsely claim that there was fraud in the Senate runoff elections in Georgia, but the only evidence they offer are clips of election night newscasts that corrected two data-entry errors.
Social media pages that share anti-vaccine messages have used a selectively edited news clip that suggests the COVID-19 vaccine is unsafe. The clip shows a nurse fainting after she gets the vaccine, but it doesn’t show her quick recovery afterward when she explains that she is prone to fainting when triggered by even a slight pain.
A false claim that an unidentified nurse died after getting the COVID-19 vaccine in Alabama has been feeding into the anti-vaccine disinformation online. The Alabama Department of Public Health reported that no one who has received the vaccine has died.
A video circulating on social media falsely claims that vaccines for COVID-19 have a microchip that “tracks the location of the patient.” The chip, which is not currently in use, would be attached to the end of a plastic vial and provide information only about the vaccine dose. It cannot track people.
A list of bogus election fraud claims, cobbled together from dubious websites and failed lawsuits aimed at overturning President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, has spread widely online.
Conspiracy theorists falsely claimed that a video of an election worker during the Georgia machine recount revealed fraud in the 2020 election. All it showed was an election worker performing a routine part of the process, according to election officials.
An unfounded conspiracy theory of widespread election fraud claims that an election technology company called Smartmatic switched votes in the 2020 election. But Smartmatic provided ballot-marking machines to only one U.S. county.
A congressman and conservative news outlets are spreading the baseless claim that the U.S. Army seized an election software company’s server in Frankfurt, Germany, that could supposedly prove there was fraud in the 2020 election. There was no such seizure — and the company doesn’t even have a server in Frankfurt.
A baseless conspiracy theory claims that a secret supercomputer was used to switch millions of votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Experts — and the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — have said the theory is a hoax and that safeguards, including paper trails, would deter such an effort.