The following post contains graphic images.
One graphic photo has been circulated dozens of times, but as BuzzFeed News
points out, the photo is actually from a January
story about a Swedish teen who was attacked at a club after trying to get away from a man who groped her.Many posts used photos of women who are domestic abuse survivors, with one account using a 2016
photo of a teen who was locked in her flat for four hours and beaten by her boyfriend. (The account has since gone private.)
A fake account for
Paul Nehlen—the alleged racist and Republican congressional candidate running against Paul Ryan who has been
banned from Twitter—used a
still from a 2013
video about domestic violence. (The tweet has since been deleted.)
Another used a photo of ex-White House staff secretary
Rob Porter‘s ex-wife Colbie Holderness, who alleged he abused her while they were married.
The Daily Show‘s Roy Wood Jr. tried to help with the debunk and even pitched a great new show idea. The photo of the
bloody towel, which was featured in other tweets, is from 2009.
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None of this should take away from the experience of seeing
Black Panther, a truly important film. But Twitter needs to step up and suspend these kinds of accounts to stop facilitating the circulation of photos that use actual trauma and survivors of abuse to create dissonance and confusion.
H/T BuzzFeed News