Conspiracy theories take off after global IT crash
The Peninsula
Washington: From fearmongering about a looming World War III to false narratives linking a cabal of global elite to a cyberattack, a torrent of onli...
Washington: From fearmongering about a looming "World War III" to false narratives linking a cabal of global elite to a cyberattack, a torrent of online conspiracy theories took off Friday after a major IT crash.
Airlines, banks, TV channels and financial institutions were engulfed in turmoil after the crash, one of the biggest in recent years that was the result of a faulty software update to an antivirus program operating on Microsoft Windows.
The proliferation of internet-breaking conspiracy theories on social media platforms -- many of which have removed guardrails that once contained the spread of misinformation -- illustrates the new normal of information chaos after a major world event.
The outage gave way to a swirl of evidence-free posts on X, the Elon Musk-owned site formerly known as Twitter, that peddled an apocalyptic narrative: The world was under attack by a nefarious force.
"I read somewhere once that ww3 (World War III) would be mostly a cyber war," one user wrote on X.