No, You Can't Vote Online: Trolls From 4chan Are Spreading Misinformation to Suppress Voters

Trolls on the website 4chan are spreading misinformation about voting and the election in an attempt to suppress voters.

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Complex Original

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As you probably already know, the election is tomorrow, Nov. 8. More than ever before, people are Googling how to vote. If you plan on voting, be careful: trolls from 4chan are busy spreading misinformation about the election.

If you're unfamiliar, 4chan is an online messaging forum that's infamous for being offensively politically incorrect. In the past, 4chan users have spread false rumors of Drake's death and have led various other hoaxes

4chan, along with Twitter and Reddit, is home to many on the Alt-Right, a white nationalist sect of conservatism that often promotes racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and sexism. The collection of trolls have benefited from Trump's rise, and have spread misinformation to boost Trump's chances. 

According to BuzzFeed News, the internet trolls are planning "a multi-pronged campaign of election day social media deception and mayhem, intending to confuse, slow, and disenfranchise Clinton voters." 

The group has already spread false information about voting online (you can't) or voting via text message (you can't).

Originally, tweets spreading false information were left in place by Twitter, which angered many on social media:

Eventually though, Twitter did delete the fake tweets, and released an official video clarifying that you cannot vote via text or Tweet:

But the trolls aren't quitting.

While the original "text to vote" misinformation instructed people to text "Hillary" to 59925, that number now sends a reply explaining, "The ad you saw was not approved by Hillary For America in any way."

This time, though, trolls on 4chan will instruct people to text "GO" to 47246, which actually is connected to the official Clinton campaign. Sending that text doesn't count as a vote, but it does prompt the reply: "Thanks for being a part of the campaign!" That, trolls think, "sounds like it counted the vote." 

The trolls are excited about their latest stunt. When one user shared concerns about this stunt possibly being voter fraud, another user replied: "You are on 4chan buddy. Our purpose of existence is to troll humanity. No one fucking cares if its illegal or voter fraud."

They plan to spread the misinformation "on election day and insert it into all of the twitter made forced hashtags, because we all know there's gonna be a paid for trending Hillary hashtag on November 8th," according to one user. "Alot of retarded libs would fall for this and not go out and vote. We need to make this happen on election day."

Another poster was even more explicit: "Remember remember the 8th of November, When /pol/ shut down the black vote." The user continued, "We all know that Twitter is the home of all black queens. They're dumb enough to fall for this shit too." 

So get ready, the trolls are coming. 

 

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