(Image/Midjourney)
It started in the darkest corners of the internet. Through late August and early September 2024, neo-Nazis on Gab were seeding a fabricated story: Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating the local pets. The claim went mainstream when a resident posted a secondhand version to a private Facebook group — something she’d heard from her neighbor’s daughter’s friend.
From there, the lie jumped to X and Truth Social. Soon, it even made its way to cable news. By the time then-presidential candidate Donald Trump repeated it at the presidential debate on Sept. 10 — before an audience of 67 million — the claim had already spawned AI-generated memes and campaign billboards. Thirty-three bomb threats followed; schools, hospitals and government buildings were evacuated.
Imagine if a fact-checker had known it was coming. Not after the damage was done, but days before it crossed from the fringes to the mainstream.
A team of USC researchers has built a system that can predict when a false rumor will jump from one social media platform to another, days before it goes mainstream.
