Twitter Is Helping Push the Most Dangerous Conspiracy on the Epstein List Yet
Twitter’s algorithm is promoting what may be the most unsavory conspiracy theory yet: that the Perry, Iowa, high school shooting is somehow part of a larger Jeffrey Epstein cover-up.
Since Wednesday evening’s release of 943 pages of court documents related to Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring, the conspiracy theories have run amok. But now, X (formerly known as Twitter) is helping take it to the next level.
One post by a verified QAnon promoter became the center of attention, garnering the most views on the floundering social media platform for claiming that the Perry shooting was a “false flag” to “distract the media” from the release of the documents.
“Not even 24 hours after the Epstein court document was released we have multiple victims who were shot at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa,” posted user @ShadowofEzra, mere moments after 17-year-old student gunman Dylan Butler opened fire on his classmates, killing at least one person and leaving another five injured. It received more than 1.5 million views by the time of publication.
“Make no mistake this is a false flag to distract the media from discussing anything in relation to Jeffrey Epstein and his clients. As more names will be released in the coming days we expect more serious distractions and false flags,” the account added.
It was just one of dozens of QAnon accounts sharing the same sentiment.
The false flag disinformation narrative about the Perry High School shooting is spreading pretty quickly on Twitter/X, probably because the platform is leaving up all of the initial posts, which are among the first posts you see when you search for info about the shooting. pic.twitter.com/kK4O2obnID
— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) January 4, 2024
The wide spreading narrative is an entirely fabricated one, likely influenced by the conspiracy theorists’ own social media algorithms, which have been widely documented as drastically influencing users’ newsfeeds. Since Facebook was hounded for its role in promoting false news articles and memes planted by Russian-connected troll farms meant to influence the 2016 presidential election, social media algorithms have been roundly criticized for isolating users in feeds stacked with what they’d algorithmically prefer to see rather than what is actually happening.
In reality, practically every major news outlet has covered the recently unsealed documents—in just the last 24 hours, Google has recorded more than 3.8 million new items pertaining to the nine-years-in-the-making release, chief among them articles from reputable news outlets around the globe, including The New York Times, Al Jazeera, the BBC, the Associated Press, The Washington Post, and thousands of others.
Meanwhile, there were 134 incidents of gunfire on U.S. school grounds in 2023—translating to an attack less than every three days, according to data from Everytown for School Safety, a statistic that unfortunately makes the occurrence of a school shooting more likely than not, Epstein’s revelatory case files be damned.
But not everyone, including some candidates for the highest offices in government, appear to have performed even that miniscule amount of research before sharing their own conspiratorial opinions on the matter.
“Not even 12 hours after the Epstein documents are released there is a mass shooting at a high school in Perry, Iowa,” posted Florida Republican Lavern Spicer, who is running for the state’s 24th Congressional District.
“I ain’t saying nothing,” she added.
X’s algorithmic choices on Thursday add to growing concern about the direction of the platform under Elon Musk, who has himself shared antisemitic and conspiratorial rhetoric that ultimately drove dozens of the company’s biggest advertisers, including Disney and IBM, off the platform.