Internet conspiracy spills over into real life; how rumors hurt real people, and why spreading them can break the law
Isolated incident, or only the beginning?
The world is full of stories we never hear about. The car crash that was narrowly averted. The oven fire that was doused in the nick of time. The credit card database that wasn't stolen because intrusion detection systems alerted the firm about the presence of a hacker. The mass shooting at a restaurant that didn't happen because -- and we'll never know why -- the man who walked in with a loaded assault rifle didn't fire at anyone.
The difference between an unspeakable tragedy that dominates headlines for days and a news brief that just passes by is often a nearly imperceptible moment. And good luck.
Smart people learn from lessons offered by such moments. Dumb people keep pressing their luck. If you just miss a head-on collision because you looked up from your text message at the last moment, what do you do the next time you are tempted to drive and text? Do you throw the phone into the back seat, thankful to be alive, or do you fall back into old habits, buoyed by the belief that yes, maybe you do have nine lives?
So we have such a moment Sunday night, when an armed man walked into a Washington D.C. pizza place at dinner time to investigate an Internet conspiracy theory called "pizzagate." Cops say he fired the weapon, but only after everyone left the restaurant.
If you aren't terrified by this incident, you aren't paying enough attention. As CNN's Brian Stelter said this morning, people who pay attention to this kind of thing are pretty sure it's going to keep happening. And the next time, we might not be so lucky. Do yourself a favor today and read about pizzagate. It's important everyone understand what's going on. Make sure to read a healthy set of sources, like your high school teacher taught you. And make sure you remember the logical fallacy of "It's true because you can't prove it's false," which hopefully you learned about in high school, too. Just because I can't prove Martians aren’t on the planet doesn't mean you can assert they are here.
Not all conspiracy theories are created equally. "Pizzagate" is a particularly pernicious, unhinged theory https://t.co/bSv8KXHRj3
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 5, 2016
The aliens debate is cute, of course, and folks who want to look for hidden clues around the planet for proof aliens are here -- knock yourself out. That's a pretty harmless hobby, not unlike playing video games.
But accusing people of things without evidence is a dangerous game. Pizzagate is now hurting people. It obviously hurt all the families who were forced to run out of Comet Ping Pong pizza in terror last night. But here's what people who engage in passing along rumors need to read, courtesy of the Washington Post. Store owners up and down the block are now getting hurt, too.
Matt Carr, the owner of the Little Red Fox market and coffee shop, said his business started getting threats last weekend. They got 30 to 40 calls before they stopped answering calls from blocked numbers, he said. “One person said he wanted to line us up in front of a firing squad,” said Carr, who spent more than an hour in lockdown with his employees Sunday.
Politics and Prose, the bookstore that has been a Washington institution and neighborhood fixture for more than 30 years, was in the middle of a book event when attendees and staff saw police converging on the block, said Bradley Graham, a store co-owner.
They, too, had received threats recently, Graham said, and were planning to meet with police Monday “because we had feared that what, up to now, had been simply despicable menacing verbal attacks online or on the phone might escalate.”
Naturally, all these businesses are in danger losing employees right now, who fear for their lives and their families. And of course, they'll lose customers too. Again, real-life consequences.
An hour or so after the incident last night, I published the information below, which I'm repeating here. This isn't a game. Look, I like a good conspiracy as much as anyone. I've broken a few news stories that began as conspiracies in my day, and that's pretty exciting. But people who do this must understand that real people get hurt when you publish things about them. The bigger the claim, the stronger the evidence you need to make it. And the more inflammatory the claim, the more you need to consider collateral damage. That's just how it works.
And now for a bit of un-requested advice. Be careful, Internet rumor mongers. If you have real evidence that a judge would allow in a court of law, by all means share it. If you are just posting coincidences for the thrill of it, or to get more Twitter followers, you might end up on the wrong side of the law. So below, you'll find a primer on the laws that govern using the Internet in ways that hurt people. Because, believe it or not, free speech has limits.
Down the block from the pizza place assault weapon incident, kids were cramming into the National Zoo for Zoo Lights. Wish we were just talking about that (Bob Sullivan photo)
WASHINGTON D.C. -- Dec. 4, 2016 -- I'm writing this story not as politics reporter -- I don't write about politics and I don't care for either political party -- but as a technology reporter who has seen what happens when the virtual world has messy real-world consequences. I’ve sen the things that anonymous Internet groups like 4Chan can do when they "doxx" people; or how fake Tweets during Hurricane Sandy made the disaster look even worse than it was. And here's my reminder at this critical time in our history, and in the history of fake news and propaganda: Free speech is not limitless. Threatening someone online is a crime. Even inciting violence can be a crime. Yelling "fire” in a crowded theater is a crime. Tweeting the NYSE is flooded or the governor is trapped when you know that isn't true might even be a crime, and it will likely get you fired, as it got @ComfortablySmug fired in 2012.
So if you are peddling in rumors just to get a bunch of retweets, be very careful you stay on the right side of the law. And if you love a good conspiracy theory and can't wait to pass it along, please at least consider the real people you might be hurting on the other and of the keyboard.
A few minutes ago, a flurry of police cars whizzed by me … in fact, they are still whizzing by as I type this … to surround the restaurant and get the suspect to leave the place. He's been arrested, and no one was hurt, thankfully.
But only an hour or so ago, families having a Sunday dinner and employees hustling for tips had to race out of Comet Ping Pong, a small but cute pizza place in Northwest D.C., near the Maryland border.
Unless you spend time reading Internet conspiracies, you probably don't know that Comet Ping Pong is the subject of a set of accusations that's I'd rather not repeat here, but you can read them for yourself at this New York Times story. In short, the rumor links the restaurant's owner to Hillary Clinton Campaign Manager John Podesta, and claims the two are involved in a secret child pedophilia ring.
Fans of this claim have coalesced around the hashtag #pizzagate, which has spread far and wide, with thousands of followers.
Such conspiracy theories have found a home on the Internet since the first bulletin board set up shop. Today, this one spilled into the real world.
There's still much we don't know about today's incident. I'll be anxious to hear what the gunman has to say. D.C. police said he has an assault rifle. I'd like to know if it was even loaded, for example. But already, #pizzagate traders are claiming that he was just a plant put there as a distraction from the real story. Those who question the conspiracy are accused of supporting pedophilia.
If evidence of children being harmed is available, I certainly hope it has been carefully logged and presented in the most constructive way. But as I sit writing this not far from the crime scene, across the street from the National Zoo, which is abuzz with children here because of the Zoo Light festival, I can't help but think about the children who ran out of Comet Pizza tonight when a crazy man with a gun walked into the place. I’ll bet many of them were on their way to Zoo Lights.
In Germany, criminal code includes the concept of Volksverhetzung. Fallout from the Nazi era led to criminal statutes that make generic "incitement to hatred" illegal, for obvious reasons. Our free speech laws don't go so far, and I'm glad they don't, of course. American law tilts heavily in favor of allowing just about any kind of speech, which means just about any kind of Tweet.
But, as I said above, free Tweeting has its limits.
Tweet a specific threat, and you can be arrested.
(It's true -- here's 10 Tweets that got someone arrested.)
Direct someone else to commit violence, and you can be arrested. (Last year, after the Paris attacks, a Michigan woman was investigated by federal authorities after writing "Dearborn, MI, has the highest Muslim population in the United States. Let's (expletive) that place up and send a message to ISIS.")
Generally, there's a high bar for actually arresting … and prosecuting ... someone for making an online threat. It's a higher bar than in-person threats, naturally. But that is changing. Cyberbullying laws in many states now give prosecutors a crime to hang on those who menace others from behind a keyboard.
So choose your words carefully, purveyors of fake news. Investigate your conspiracies -- after all, once in a while, conspiracies turn into real news. But virtual words, like virtual crimes, have real consequences. Thank goodness no one was hurt today in Comet Pizza. I fear that won't be true the next time.
If you've read this far, perhaps you'd like to support what I do. That's easy. Sign up for my free email list, or click on an advertisement, or just share the story.