Mass shootings in the United States have fueled a flood of misinformation directed at an unlikely group: transgender people. Users on the fringe internet forum 4chan speculated that the shooter was transgender before police identified him as the gunman who killed five people Monday at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky. Following the identification of Connor Sturgeon, right-wing commentators such as former Donald Trump aide Sebastian Gorka shared screenshots of the suspect’s LinkedIn page, noting that it included his pronouns. The story is the latest to fuel anti-LGBTQ misinformation on platforms like Twitter, which analysts say has increased dramatically since Elon Musk bought the company. After a late-March shooting at a Nashville elementary school, Miss Peppermint, a former “RuPaul’s Drag Race” contestant and transgender activist based in New York, said she was shocked to see her name and photo above a tweet she never wrote.
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