It doesn't take much to change how an image is perceived. On the internet, fake news and conspiracy theories spread like wildfire from different parts of the political spectrum.
The Commissioner of Police in the state of New South Wales, Mal Lanyon, says, according to 9 News, that fake news and the spread of rumors is a major challenge with social media.
The police force has been one of the targets of various disinformation campaigns.
Police target
In a cropped image, one of the police officers who responded to Bondi on Sunday is seen raising her arms in a gesture of surrender, but the uncropped image shows that she is actually directing fleeing people away from the scene.
"She was shot at when she arrived at the scene. There are bullet holes in the windshield of the vehicle she was traveling in, and she thought she was going to die," Lanyon said.
To her credit and my utmost respect as her boss, she continued to perform her duty.
Registered in Iceland
Ahmed al-Ahmed is being hailed as a hero in many places. The 43-year-old greengrocer disarmed one of the gunmen during the attack, saving many lives.
But fake news is now spreading online that the real man behind the heroic act is actually Edward Crabtree and was born in Sydney. The false information is now being spread in racist and Islamophobic posts on sites such as X. According to an ABC News review , the original source is a fictitious news site that was created on the day of the terrorist attack and is registered in Iceland.
Anti-Semitic messages are also being spread through fake news. One of the survivors of the terrorist attack is used in an AI-generated image in which he is depicted laughing while having fake blood painted on him. According to ABC, the image was published by a Russian disinformation site along with an article claiming that the man is actually part of the propaganda machine of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad.
