The real former student, a man who attended a school where Walz taught, told The Post that they never met. He said he was dismayed to see the video showing someone using his name to make the claims.

Matthew Metro didn’t recognize the face that popped up on his cellphone screen when he clicked a link that a friend texted him last week. But after hitting play on the online video, he was dismayed by what he saw.

“My name is Matthew Metro,” said the man in the video, who went on to describe life as a student decades ago at a high school in Minnesota where Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz was a teacher. Some of the details — including about being at the school when Walz worked there — matched the biography of the real Metro. But the man in the video went further, leveling fabricated allegations against Walz, whom the real Metro said he never met.

Millions of people have viewed social media posts containing the video since it was published Wednesday on X, formerly Twitter. For some viewers, the use of Metro’s name and verifiable biographical details created an aura of credibility around the false allegations. Not so for the real Metro, whom The Washington Post located in Hilo, Hawaii.

Non-paywall link

    • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      20·
      1 month ago

      Elon Musk ought to be held personally liable for defaming Matthew Metro and Tim Walz.

      • Em Adespoton
        12·
        1 month ago

        Only if he can be tied to it. Otherwise, the same section 230 protections cover him as anyone else who creates a digital platform others can use.

    • _bcron_@lemmy.worldEnglish
      22·
      1 month ago

      I don’t know about this specifically but I’ve read that a lot of this Walz allegation stuff is being traced to Russia. In general a lot of Harris Walz misinformation/deepfakes are allegedly coming from Russia.

      Wired has a paywalled article but if you google ‘Walz allegations fake Russia’ you’ll get quite a few hits.

      But if that’s the case, like ‘quasi-professional’ propaganda firms, they probably use cracked wifi, VPNs, coffee shops, probably hard to find them at a physical location, let alone Russia allowing extradition. They’d want some fair trade at a minimum

    • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      15·
      1 month ago

      Of course it is. But the damage has been done and by the time that charges can be filed, it will be well after the election.

      Also, our justice department seems to have some sort of blinders for alt right conservatives.

    • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
      13·
      1 month ago

      Yes. If the person is not located in the US or a country that would extradite, that gets significantly less likely and possible though.

      • Baggins@piefed.social
        20·
        1 month ago

        Like Russia, North Korea, Iran or China? In that case we need to hold accountable the head of the company promoting these sort of posts. Musk.

  • Miles O'Brien@startrek.websiteEnglish
    33·
    1 month ago

    What’s insane to me is that someone clearly looked for a list of people to find a REAL name, but didn’t bother checking if the owner of that name was still alive and able to say “hey that isn’t me, they’re lying about being me”

  • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
    322·
    1 month ago

    This isn’t fair to him. This is the sort of terrorism I was afraid of.

    Fuck the GOP. Fuck Russia. If this convinces one person, it’s too many.

    I don’t know how, but we need to destroy racism once and for all. Make it mandatory education on what they do. Make it mandatory education on how it destroys a country. Make it mandatory education how fascism is deadly to even the in group.

    But first, Dems need to stack the Supreme Court. I’ve said it since I learned in highschool that FDR did it to save the goddamn country. Remove the filibuster. End FPTP. End the representative cap. If the Senate serves some important legislative function, keep them, but remove their voting power. Or also have the Senate divided up by population.

    Write an amendment reversing Citizens United.

    Then, maybe, we have a chance at continuing the great experiment.