Over the past few days, there has been a massive uptick in the use of social media to spread propaganda and incite further unrest. The most striking examples I've seen are the (seemingly) organized campaign on Twitter called #baltimorelootcrew. This tag is allegedly being used by looters to post images of people they assaulted and of items they stole. If you look at the accounts of the posters, their tweet histories often go back a few days with some really nasty racist stereotypes that would have probably fallen under Poe's Law if not for the fact that earlier Twitter history is loaded with nothing but "gamergate" and other social-justice-trolling stuff. So far it would seem that quite a few of these troll accounts are trying to fan the fire of racial tension.

Then there is the /r/baltimore subreddit. Non-residents from racist and troll subs have piled in and begun posting false "eyewitness" accounts under fake names as well as downvote brigading anyone who is trying to set the record straight (from right there on the ground). While the world is watching the baltimore subreddit, the most upvoted info is often completely fabricated to piss people off.

And then yesterday, there was the reddit live blog which was viewed by at least 10k people at any given time. A few folks who claimed to be transcribing the police scanner logs were in actuality posting false reports of incidents all over the city (which were not actually happening). At one point I messaged the account that was running it and somehow got replies from multiple accounts. When I mentioned that a lot of the info being posted was erroneous, the main poster replied "it's only fake until it's real".

This was also where they kept spamming the alleged flyers advertising more planned riots later in the day. As far as I can tell, these flyers did not originate in the community but from online trolls.

People all over town and around the nation are following Twitter, Reddit, and other social sites but so much of the information is either malicious or part of the dangerous rumor mill that makes claims without verification and only serves to agitate people in a tense situation.

http://mic.com/articles/116680/11-stunning-images-highlight-...