Dr. Natalia Solenkova woke up Monday morning to a flood of Twitter notifications on her phone. She had hundreds of new followers at Miami’s paramedics, who, like thousands of others on Twitter, were pissed at her.
In tweets, comments and direct messages on Twitter and other social platforms, the stranger demanded to know why she deleted the following tweets: My heart was in the right place. I vaccinated out of love, but Anti-Vaxer did everything out of hate. If I had to die for love of the world, that’s it. But I never regret or feel sorry. ”
Solenkova did not delete the tweet. In fact, she didn’t write it at all.What a misinformation researcher it was call “Cheap fakes” are fake media, such as images and videos, that are cheap to produce.. Someone clumsily altered one of Solenkova’s posts to portray a blind, even deadly frenzy against Covid vaccines and denigration of anti-vaccine activists.
In the days that followed, despite Solenkova’s protests and pleas to Twitter to stop the spread of the image, the fake tweets circulated on the right-wing internet, leading to a popular and increasingly enthusiastic anti-vaccine movement. became the prey of The tweet also became Joe Rogan’s popular podcast, with Rogan later apologizing for discussing it.
Solenkova knew what was coming next — a wave of harassment. She didn’t really care about the comments and messages that she was a terrible doctor, that she shouldn’t practice, that she was killing people. She ignored her hateful Direct messages on her private personal account.
“I purposely didn’t spend a lot of time reading them because I just wanted to find the original tweets and delete them,” she said. But I’m not looking, I’ve probably blocked 1,000 accounts.”
Solenkova, like many other medical professionals, has become a minor public figure during the pandemic. Before the fake tweet, Solenkova had 30,000 followers on her Twitter. by reporting Her observations of working in underserved areas during the pandemic and her account were used to debunk misinformation about Covid, vaccines and unproven treatments.
“I started tweeting because people were dying and hospitals weren’t ready,” she said.
Despite the overwhelming success of the covid vaccine — it prevented There are millions of serious infections and deaths — an aggressive, politicized anti-vaccine community persists.
Online harassment has become increasingly common for doctors during the pandemic, according to physician researcher Dr. Ali Neitzel. the study Misinformation.
“Targeting individual doctors is a well-worn tactic,” said Nietzel. “But this cheaply made fake — trying to hoax doctors doing unpaid advocacy — is at an all-time low.”
Naitzel said the use of fake tweets like those targeting Solenkova is seen as a sign of despair among anti-vaccine activists struggling to spread false narratives that vaccines are not safe.
“And demonizing the outspoken doctor gives them the enemy they’re looking for,” she said.
There was clear information that the tweets attributed to Solenkova were fake and likely created by something known as a tweet generator. Despite the absurdity of the message, the font was off and her 53 characters exceeded Twitter’s 280 character limit.
One of the first tweets of the defaced image was an Oklahoma vlogger, white supremacist conference The person who is by the Ramtsu Pole. Ramsey added to the tweet that “COVID was really a cult.”
In an email sent Friday in response to an NBC News inquiry, Ramsey said he first encountered the fake tweet on another website. “We will reply to tweets we see on various message boards and newsgroups. If we find that the tweet is not legitimate or satire, we will remove it,” he wrote. The tweet was deleted seconds later.
By Wednesday, the fake tweet had gone viral, being shared by many popular accounts, garnering millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes and shares.
Right-wing Twitter commentator Ian Miles Cheong, who Twitter owner Elon Musk frequently replies to, added, “She deleted the tweet. I wonder why.” Chung has since deleted the tweet.
Jenna Ellis, a right-wing political commentator and former attorney in President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, said: tweetedwith the comment “delusional justification”.
In response to the harassing messages, Solenkova did what she could to stop the pile-up and made her Twitter account private. But some took it not as proof that their flock was causing harm, but as proof that the tweet was genuine.
“At first I thought it was a parody account” murmured Canadian lawyer and YouTuber David Freiheit. “Then I went to check her profile and her tweet was protected to show it wasn’t a parody. bottom!”
Solenkova said she repeatedly reported the tweet to Twitter and asked her 30,000 followers to do the same. Her Twitter response, shared by NBC News, said the company determined the tweet did not violate its policies. “In order for an account to violate our policy, it must portray another person or business in a misleading or deceptive manner,” the message said.
Amid Musk’s acquisition in November, critics question the company’s ability to bounce back misinformation, dislike When impersonation on the platform. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment about her experience with Solenkova. Ella Irwin, Twitter’s vice president of trust and safety, did not respond to her email requesting comment.
By Wednesday, the fake tweets were streaming into Spotify’s podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience,” where an 11-minute segment analyzing the tweets aired and was shown during the discussion.
Logan told guest Brett Weinstein:He is a former biology professor at Evergreen State University in Washington, who is promoting an unproven coronavirus cure. Contains ivermectin.
“This woman’s take on this is this perfect encapsulation of this ideological capture we see on social media,” Logan said.
On Thursday, Logan temporarily deleted the episode. explained on twitter that he was deceived; “My sincerest apologies to everyone, especially those who were deceived,” he tweeted.
This episode was later republished without any discussion of the fake tweets.
Weinstein murmured It claimed that deletion was the only way to “protect the subject of impersonation.”Still, the video for this segment remains online and is being circulated by accounts unaffiliated with Logan.. One video has over 5 million views on Twitter.
A spokeswoman for Logan did not return a request for comment. Weinstein did not respond to a request for comment.
“You deconstruct my name, you show me a picture, you spend 11 minutes people searching me on Google,” Solenkova said, adding that the forgery and its expansion could lead to her career as a mobile doctor. He added that he feared it could have a lasting effect on
“I’m doing my best,” she said. “I know I didn’t write this. But does it pop up in complaints to the medical board? In my Google search results? I’m trying to calm down and think. ,” But people need to know that this can happen to any of us.