The Buttigieg Conspiracy

Hellooooo newsletter readers,
This year has been lavishing us with gifts of disinformation (ugh) and so, after a brief hiatus, the Fake Newsletter is resuming publication. We’re going to use this space to dig into digital deception, social media manipulation, and general online fakery.
With more chaos to come as the US presidential race progresses, we’d like to hear from you.
What do you want from this newsletter? Brief updates or in-depth analyses? Tips for online investigations or an accessible peek at academic research? Are you only here for the memes? Smash that reply button and send us your thoughts. We will read them all.
With that, let’s dive into the latest fake news weather forecast.

A man named Chinedu

On Sunday, a Nigerian man named Chinedu deactivated his Twitter account, @easychinedu. The account wasn’t particularly popular, with roughly 200 followers, but Chinedu frequently used it to post support for presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg. One of those tweets, sent on Jan. 30, became the focus of a conspiracy theory and sent an online mob searching through Chinedu’s social media presence.
“Team Pete. Hey. It’s Lis. It’s Phase 4. Time to leave it all on the floor. Phone bankers, we need you,” said the tweet, which Chinedu posted as a joke playing off a campaign email he saw online.
It quickly got taken out of context as Twitter users, reporters, and others speculated that @easychinedu was a fake account run by Lis Smith, a communications adviser for Buttigieg’s campaign.
Chinedu began receiving harassment and death threats. Amateur sleuths dug for more supposed evidence. They leaned on flimsy claims that a Nigerian man would use different slang or wouldn’t use the word “chutzpah.” Influential accounts, including journalist David Klion and podcast host Rob Rousseau, helped fuel the false claims by sharing it with their thousands of followers.
Chinedu pleaded with reporters to obscure some personal details to protect what little privacy he had left, but even that was used as proof that he was a sock puppet account. It took multiple news outlets — including us — talking to Chinedu and debunking the rumor for Twitter users to be dissuaded. Some deleted their false tweets, but many people still seem to believe the account belonged to Smith.

What’s remarkable about the entire situation is how quickly it happened — from 2 p.m. Eastern time, when the first viral tweet was sent, to 3:45 p.m., when we published the first story debunking the hoax.
If you were offline for a few hours on Sunday, it’s likely you missed the whole flare-up. But other people live in a different reality. Some of them just look dumb for having fanned the flames of the rumor, while others look worse for clinging to it in the face of clear evidence that Chinedu isn’t Lis Smith. For the rest of us, the incident has blown over with the news cycle and is already forgotten.
What’s for certain is that it took very little time, effort, and proof for this conspiracy theory to spring up. Something like it will happen again.
—Jane

Got a tip? Email us: fakenewsletter@buzzfeed.com or find us on Twitter: @craigsilverman and @janelytv. Want to communicate with us securely? Here’s how: tips.buzzfeed.com

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