Following this weekend’s deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas, numerous rumors centered on fake victims and misinformation about the tragedy have circulated across social media.

Amid those rumors was a series of deliberate hoaxes that originated from a variety of sources — including 4chan’s alt-right stronghold /pol/; a fake Facebook page claiming that the shooter, Stephen Paddock, was a member of antifa; and several troll accounts on Facebook and Twitter.

In other words, during a moment when most people were reeling in horror and seeking information about a terrible event that killed more than 50 people and injured over 500 more, a smaller subset saw an opportunity — a chance to spread rumors and falsehoods on the internet. And in some cases, those rumors and falsehoods were seemingly fabricated by individuals or groups connected to the alt-right, with the specific intention of destabilizing their political opponents.

Several contradictory threads about Paddock’s motive, for example, were notably linked to a 4chan plot to create a fake narrative around what had happened. Examples included suggesting that Paddock had recently converted to Islam, falsely identifying him as a leftist Democrat who watched mainstream liberal media, and claiming he was an “antifa Bernie Bro.” Further muddling the situation were several instances of random people being falsely identified as victims.

While such rumormongering may not seem especially significant given the all-too-familiar topic of “fake news” and the widespread confusion that often follows incidents like the Las Vegas shooting, it takes on more sinister overtones when viewed in the context of how misinformation typically spreads online.

In essence, the Las Vegas shooter hoaxes seem to align with something larger — an ongoing war, waged online, against mainstream media and democratic society. There are a number of complicating factors in play, making it hard to know exactly who’s behind the misinformation. But for many who deliberately spread it, the goal seems clear: exploit the news of the day in order to create anti-leftist propaganda — even if that news is a major tragedy.

Members of the alt-right spread politically biased lies about both the shooter and his victims

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, few details were available about Paddock, other than that he was found dead in the hotel room from which he fired into a crowd of people on the Las Vegas Strip. Paddock’s brother told reporters that Paddock had no known political or religious affiliations, and there was no obvious motive.

Days later, investigators are still struggling to discern what caused Paddock to haul 23 guns up to his 32nd-floor suite and open fire on the street below. But the relative lack of information in the early hours of Monday morning didn’t stop various 4chan members from mobilizing with the intent to concoct and distribute a narrative that Paddock was a member of the far left. As chronicled by BuzzFeed’s Ryan Broderick, numerous threads arose on /pol/ to execute such a task, with one thread asserting the need to “control the narrative.”

In case you're wondering how this works, here's a 4chan thread called "CONTROL THE NARRATIVE. DON'T LET FAKE NEWS TAKE CONTROL." pic.twitter.com/gtGcXOjtsx — Ryan Broderick (@broderick) October 2, 2017

New far-right narrative forming: Stephen Paddock is "Antifa" pic.twitter.com/vHe77FD1im — Ryan Broderick (@broderick) October 2, 2017

In addition to distributing inaccurate information about Paddock, 4chan and other sites also tried to spread false information about a man named Geary Danley, the ex-husband of Paddock’s girlfriend (who was briefly reported to be a person of interest in the case). Apparently 4chan /pol/ members lit upon Danley as a “suspect” due to his list of liberal Facebook interests.

There are at least 6 4chan threads workshopping the narrative that Geary Danley and his family are dangerous leftists happening right now pic.twitter.com/AzbZ9XpIn9 — Ryan Broderick (@broderick) October 2, 2017

This plot worked to a small degree — the far-right website Gateway Pundit briefly identified Danley as the primary suspect while proclaiming his alleged leftist political affiliations, and Google briefly returned a 4chan thread about Danley as a top news story to users whose search queries included his name.

In an emailed statement provided to Vox, Google claimed the “top news” incident was quickly corrected by its search algorithm:

Unfortunately, early this morning we were briefly surfacing an inaccurate 4chan website in our Search results for a small number of queries. Within hours, the 4chan story was algorithmically replaced by relevant results. This should not have appeared for any queries, and we’ll continue to make algorithmic improvements to prevent this from happening in the future.

Misinformation about other people potentially involved in the shooting also circulated. A running meme that frequently reappears after mass shootings falsely identified an alt-right comedian named Sam Hyde as the Las Vegas shooter. And on Twitter, several photographs of fake “victims” (which appear to have been posted by since-suspended spam accounts) began to spread. Numerous minor celebrities — including Arsenal soccer player Mesut Özil, porn star Johnny Sins, and former Vine star TerRio Harshaw, a.k.a. Lil Terio — were among the falsely identified dead.

By midday Monday, some members of the alt-right were deep in the thick of conspiracy creation, arguing both that Paddock was a left-wing Democrat and that the seriousness of the shooting was being exaggerated by “crisis actors” — a common element of right-wing conspiracy theories that insist some victims of mass shootings and other incidents are actors hired by the government to make a “crisis” seem worse than it is.

Even Scott Adams, the alt-right-leaning creator of Dilbert, joined in.

The creator of Dilbert is spreading a rumor that Stephen Paddock's brother might be a crisis actor pic.twitter.com/idhiiMuz5r — Ryan Broderick (@broderick) October 2, 2017

It can be especially confusing and harmful when this kind of misinformation garners attention from, and then gets repeated by, “verified” Twitter users — who for better or worse are often perceived as being more authoritative and trustworthy than those without blue checks by their names. It’s natural for anyone who’s confused in a time of chaos or crisis, or anyone who’s just looking for an excuse to blame a major tragedy on their political opposition, to look to such figures and assume they’re telling the truth — as opposed to repeating a rumor that was first sown in the wilds of the internet by political agitators far, far removed from the scene of the event.

The deliberate creation and distribution of fake news in a crisis can be the result of several overlapping factors. (One of them may be Russia.)

At a glance, it’s hard to understand what a soccer player or a Vine star has to do with a national tragedy, and why trolls would seek to enact this kind of deliberate cruelty during the chaotic moments after a deadly mass shooting. As evidenced by 4chan’s attempts to build an anti-leftist narrative around Paddock, in this case there's certainly a political component. But another significant aspect of this behavior seems to be about control and power — including manually and methodically creating and distributing disinformation and directing the media toward it.

For example, among the initial information compiled about Geary Danley, the man falsely accused by 4chan of being the Las Vegas shooter, was his list of Facebook likes, which were screencapped and shared throughout alt-right forums after the shooting. This list, seen by many as “proof” that Danley is a left-leaning progressive, was then emphasized by multiple right-wing media outlets that identified Danley as a possible suspect, with some characterizing the list as though it were incontestable evidence.

And as the Kevin Roose explains at the New York Times, “this was no one-off incident.” Roose writes:

Over the past few years, extremists, conspiracy theorists and government-backed propagandists have made a habit of swarming major news events, using search-optimized “keyword bombs” and algorithm-friendly headlines. These organizations are skilled at reverse-engineering the ways that tech platforms parse information, and they benefit from a vast real-time amplification network that includes 4Chan and Reddit as well as Facebook, Twitter and Google. Even when these campaigns are thwarted, they often last hours or days — long enough to spread misleading information to millions of people.

To learn more about what the motives behind this kind of behavior might be, I spoke to University of Maryland law professor Danielle Citron. She’s the author of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, a 2014 book that explores mob shaming, internet stalking, and other forms of online abuse — much of it orchestrated by people who frequent /pol/ and similar forums.

Citron told me that numerous issues and behaviors converge to form these situations — from isolated needy individuals wanting to one-up each other on the internet to a desire to spread good old-fashioned propaganda.

“Some of it is idiosyncratic personalities,” she said in a phone interview. “Part of it is hiding behind a screen to do things, being able to say and do things we couldn’t do in person, getting caught up in the crowd.”

In group contexts like /pol/ systematically urging one another to disseminate fake news, simple one-upmanship can be a major factor. “You’re part of this groupthink. It’s this strain of getting caught up online with this group you feel a part of, and you can one-up each other with stories,” Citron said. “You perform, you feel powerful, you’re getting something out of the moment.” That can also lead to “a cruelty and a carelessness and a shared enjoyment of that cruelty.”

But Citron also pointed out the political overtones of painting Paddock as an extreme leftist and noted that the tactics used by the fake news creators in the case of the Las Vegas shooting appeared to match the ones used in the lead-up to the 2016 election — namely, fake social media pages and propaganda accounts distributing false or misleading information.

Right now, FB's trending topic page for the Las Vegas shooting features two (2) posts from a Russian propaganda outlet. pic.twitter.com/jDR1V0zzPy — Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) October 2, 2017

“I think we’re in this new phase of disinformation campaigns,” she said. “We’re in this moment of propaganda and swirl of confusion that’s incredibly destabilizing.” She specifically pointed to people “who feel disempowered” and seek ways to regain their own power through spreading chaos.

“They feel they are under assault and are … going to use propaganda to destabilize their opposition,” she said.

Citron warned that anti-democratic states — perhaps Russia or North Korea or other anti-democratic entities — might seek to use the chaos and uncertainty of moments like these to perform destabilizing actions against progressivism.

“I really do believe we have a greater political war going on with disruptive state actors, whether it’s from Russia or North Korea or elsewhere,” she said. “Propaganda has always been war on government’s best tool. Disruptive forces like Russia thrive off the destabilization of our country — [they’re] part of a broader way to use our own society’s freedoms against us.”

In other words, the false information you may be seeing online could be the work of an iconoclastic disgruntled troll, or it could be state-sponsored fake news generated as an arm of international politics.

The best way to prevent the spread of these kinds of hoaxes is simple: stay skeptical, and be very careful about what you share

Citron cautioned that healthy skepticism is the best way to avoid inadvertently helping hoaxes spread.

“I hope that people think twice about the news we spread and information we receive,” she said. “We need to be much better consumers and providers. Don’t believe the first two hits [in a search engine result] are the most accurate. Think about sourcing and be a discerning consumer of information, like you are of everything else in your life, and be a discerning sharer.”

She also warned that it’s important to remember that there are real, dangerous consequences to the rapid spread of disinformation online, citing the case of Sunil Tripathi, a man who was misidentified by Reddit sleuths as a suspect in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Tripathi, who had gone missing a full month before the bombing, was found days later, dead of suicide.

“If words cause action in a way that is dangerous, so too do these fake profiles,” Citron said.