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Salon
Salon
Politics
Andy Kroll

Big Tech fails on Big Lie vigilantism

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

The dummied-up flyer bore the hallmarks of a real WANTED poster. A grainy photo of a woman outside an election office in the suburbs of Atlanta stamped with the word "WANTED." An image of a sheriff's badge and the phone number for the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office. The implication was clear: The woman was being sought by the local sheriff for voter fraud.

The flyer was fake, and though the sheriff's office eventually called it out, the false poster went viral, amassing tens of thousands of shares, views and threatening comments on Facebook, Twitter and TikTok and raising fears that harm could come to the unidentified woman.

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