A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:
Tweet falsely attributed to Virginia Tech swimmer
CLAIM: Reka Gyorgy, a Virginia Tech swimmer, posted from her personal Twitter account a statement saying her finals spot was “stolen” by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, and she encouraged other swimmers to refuse to compete.
THE FACTS: The tweet did not come from Gyorgy’s account. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed to The Associated Press that the user responsible for the tweet was suspended for violating the platform’s policy on the “creation of fake accounts,” and multiple representatives from Virginia Tech’s athletics department also said the account was not authentic. The tweet gained more than 28,000 retweets and 101,000 likes before the account was suspended Monday, about a day after the post was made. The critical message came after Thomas, a University of Pennsylvania senior, made history on March 17 as the first transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming championship. Gyorgy had criticized the NCAA rules that allowed Thomas to compete in the women’s division on other platforms, and called for them to be changed in a letter posted publicly to her Facebook account on Sunday afternoon. But the tweet posted hours later under a profile using Gyorgy’s name and photo did not come from an account belonging to her, according to Twitter. “The account referenced has been permanently suspended for violating our platform manipulation and spam policy, specifically the creation of fake accounts,” Twitter wrote in a statement to the AP. Pete Moris, Virginia Tech’s associate athletics director for strategic communications, and Sergio Lopez Miro, women’s swimming and diving head coach, also confirmed that the tweet did not come from Gyorgy. “The account was fake,” Lopez Miro wrote in an email to the AP. The earliest available record of the now-suspended page was captured on March 20 by the internet archive the WayBack Machine. At that time, the account had posted several retweets supporting Republican politicians dating back to December 2021. The account had not posted any content about swimming or Gyorgy until March 17, when the NCAA women’s swimming championships were underway. Additionally, the same account previously used the handle “@Amanda191923” before changing it to “RekaGyorgy_.” Searches on Twitter for the Amanda username reveal older tweets now linked to the fake Gyorgy account. Before it was deleted, several conservative news outlets and social media users with large followings had retweeted or shared screenshots of the tweet about Thomas, representing it as a genuine post from Gyorgy. Thomas has followed NCAA and Ivy League rules since she began her transition in 2019 by starting hormone replacement therapy, the AP has reported. Gyorgy did not respond to a request for comment via Facebook Messenger.
— Associated Press writer Sophia Tulp in Atlanta contributed this report.
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Posts inflate Libyan civilian deaths caused by NATO in 2011
CLAIM: NATO killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of civilians during a 2011 military intervention in Libya.