This Is The Fake News Being Spread About The London Bridge Terror Attack

Fake posts began appearing on social media minutes after news of the suspected terror attack in London broke, claiming to show pictures of suspects and possible victims.

1. People are posting fake pictures of alleged suspects.

Twitter

As happened during the Manchester Arena terror attack, trolls immediately took advantage of the terror incidents at London Bridge and Borough Market to tweet unrelated pictures and smear their opponents.

One image posted by several Twitter accounts claimed to show a picture of the suspect behind the wheel of a silver car. In reality he is Samuel Hyde, an American comedian, writer, and actor.

2. People are sharing fake photos of missing people who were supposedly caught up in the attack.

Twitter

Whenever a major incident occurs there is almost always someone on the internet trying to use it as an opportunity to troll the public. Trolls are able to take advantage of a collective desire to help by exploiting people's willingness to share pictures of supposedly missing people.

In this example a photo of a YouTuber who uses the name MattyBRaps was retweeted by people who genuinely believed they were helping find someone's brother.

3. The terror incidents were concentrated in one part of central London – not spread out across southeast England.

chris @chrisjv91

Errrrr @msnbc that's not where #Vauxhall is

Sat Jun 03 23:32:07 UTC+0000 2017

For a short time the Metropolitan police suggested a third incident – in addition to those at London Bridge and Borough Market – was underway in the Vauxhall area of London.

This prompted the US TV network MSNBC to label "Vauxhall" on a map for viewers. Unfortunately they instead labelled a point far outside central London, potentially the offices of Vauxhall Motors in Luton, inadvertently giving the impression that incidents were taking place over a wider area of the country.

The Met police later confirmed the Vauxhall incident was unrelated to the terror attacks.

4. A tweet along with a screenshot from Al Jazeera's Facebook live said that "moderate muslims" were laughing at the incident.

Tennessee @TEN_GOP

Look how all of these "moderate Muslims" on Al Jazeera react to the London terrorist attack. #LondonBridge

12:34 AM - 04 Jun 2017

Similar screenshots were also circulated after the Westminster attack earlier this year. It's difficult to say whether the image is legitimate as one person reacting with the laughing emoji can flood the screen.

And the overall reactions on the Facebook live show a very small minority of Facebook users had chosen the laughing emoji.

Facebook / Al Jazeera / Via Facebook: aljazeerachannel