A screenshot appears to show congresswoman Rashida Tlaib accusing America of “raping and pillaging my people” on Twitter.
The below screenshot claims to show the moment that Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib penned an accusatory tweet targeting Americans.
Americans have spent decades raping and pillaging my people.
What goes around comes around.
#FridayFeeling
Some instances of this rumour claim that Tlaib subsequently “quickly deleted the tweet”. Others claim the tweet was in response to the siege of the US Embassy in Iraq.
Whatever context the tweet is presented in, it’s false, since Tlaib did not tweet it. Fake tweets, especially those with a specific political agenda, are a frequent type of misinformation on social media, especially considering the ease to which users can create fake snapshots of alleged social media postings.
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In this case, hoaxers have taken advantage of the fact that a capital ‘I’ is identical to a lower case ‘L’ on Twitter, which allowed them to create an almost identical account to Rashida Tlaib’s account, switching the I for an L in her surname. With this fake account, they tweeted the above post, which was then “screenshotted” and circulated through social media.
Eagle eyed viewers will note that the fake account – which has since been deleted – lacked Twitter’s verified mark, which Tlaib’s account has.
As such, we rank the rumour false.