Last week, a racist joke that originated in a bad corner of the Internet quickly got out of hand, and before French politicians and Greek news channels — among others—falsely reported that an old photo of legendary game designer Hideo Kojima was actually a photo of Tetsuya YamagamiThe 41-year-old assassinated former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday.
I say “joke,” but that really turns off things that are even funny from a distance, since there’s absolutely nothing that links the two men, physically or otherwise, other than the two. are all Japanese.
If you just join this, this is Zack reporting the news on Friday:
Immediately after today’s assassination, some villains in a dark corner online joked that Abe’s suspected killer looked like Kojima. Final, this reached Twitterwhere the French far-right politician Damien Rieu—Perhaps not understanding that it was a joke — retweeted the images of Kojima with a comment that meant “Murdering Leftists,” helping to spread it even more. While Rieu ended up doing delete tweetsit seems the damage was done and may have helped distract at least one Greek news station from reporting on the assassination.
Obviously that’s extremely dangerous reporting, especially since it involves someone already in the public eye, so Kojima Productions released a statement Friday night that:
Kojima Productions strongly condemn the spreading of fake news and false rumors. We do not tolerate such libel and will consider suing in some cases.
French far-right politician Damien Rieu has since deleted his tweets, and Greek news channel ANT TV1 has also deleted his video featuring the photo.. It’s unclear at the time of posting but how far this misinformation has spread and how many people have viewed both of the initial reports and have yet to see any corrections made.
