Some days ago we published a false update about comrade Paulina’s death in Mexico. We took a wrong decision and trusted an -what proved to be- unreliable source on the matter. For what it’s worth that source wasn’t Facebook. We apologize and removed any faulty posts.
We quote en.contrainfo.espiv.net :
Or: Why misinformation should concern us all, in our attempt to produce counter-information…
Finally on January 25th, 2014 the infamous by now “facebook.com/Bloque.Anarko.Oriente” released a text claiming that they (but who are they really?) are sorry to inform everyone they made a mistake by revealing that Maria Paulina Inefavel Lorandi had brutally died; they are sorry to inform they spread irresponsible horseshit from the very beginning. We wouldn’t even bother making a reference to facebook dirt; however, the public account of “Bloque Anarko Oriente” was the original source of the creepy nonsense about Maria Paulina’s death, which never even occurred.
Sadly, this story was diffused since January 21st (to this very day) on counter-information pages, too. Why exactly did counter-information nodes reproduce this unverified claim which, in their knowledge, came straight from some facebook account (also those who were warned of its most probable falsehood, but to no avail)? Why was it deemed so necessary to transmit the news about an anarchist being raped and murdered in Mexico without finding out for sure if this atrocious fact is even real, without bothering for a moment to crosscheck the story with trustworthy anarchists who happen to be active in the territory controlled by the Mexican State, in order to avoid one’s credibility going down the drain because of facebook falsehoods? Why are facebook claims imposing themselves on wider counter-information flow? And what were some of the counter-information sites, the various leftist media, and all sorts of bloggers thinking when they spread false photographs of “Paulina”? Ever since the first moment that this distressing news was out, several facebook(!) users expressed uncertainty about its truthfulness. The “Bloque Anarko Oriente” were repeatedly notified of the fact that the young woman pictured on their facebook page as “comrade Paulina from Mexico” was none other than a completely different woman from Chile, who does not have a 7-month-old baby but rather a 5-year-old child… Whoever the pictured woman is, the “Bloque Anarko Oriente” not only insisted on their lament without making any effort to confirm the news, and without admitting that none of them ever knew any “Paulina” in person, but they even called for a march on January 25th in Mexico City in remembrance of “their compañera”, only to take back their call and the entire fictitious story at the last minute.
Of course shit happens. But on a more practical level, we urge all concerned to hide every single related post immediately, and for fuck’s sake take down the pictures of that woman, who has been overexposed on the internet as allegedly deceased. Counter-information is a weapon; don’t turn it into a bad joke.