We had a great reaction to our first post on prohibitionists getting owned by community notes. It was the most read and most tweeted story we’ve produced in the weeks since we launched. It was so good that the Daily Mail stole our idea. Props to them.
Because of that, and because the madness hasn’t stopped yet, here’s a second in this open-ended series. As long as this kind of fake news is pushed, we’ll keep calling it out.
Canadian Lung Health Foundation doesn’t know what “youth” means
In one of the most ridiculous examples of fake news we’ve seen to date, the Canadian Lung Health Foundation made the extraordinary claim that three quarters of a million Canadian “youth” were vaping daily.
The problem was that their definition of “youth” included people up to the age of 30!
We called for a Community note to be added two days after the post was made, and Community Notes responded in classic style. In case you’re wondering, the actual number based on the same data for those under 19 was around one fifth of what the Lung Foundation claimed.
Fake claims made about a bag full of Elf Bars in Chicago
User @doxie_gay, a Chicago native with over 17,000 followers, tweeted out a photo of a trash bag full of Elf Bars, claiming that their “friend” was a school teacher in Chicago and had collected all of these in three days.
The problem was that we know that this claim can’t be true.
The same image has been tweeted multiple times since 2023 with the same claim about them being found in a school; when in fact the image had first been tweeted by user @MostEvilMan in August 2023 with no reference to schools whatsoever.
We wonder how many people have been fooled by this image since it made its way onto the internet.
Vaccine sceptics take on vaping
UK vaccine sceptic campaign group “Informed Consent Matters” made the bizarre claim that vaping is part of some sort of government depopulation strategy, claiming that “what cigarettes do in 40 years, vaping will do in 10”. This bizarre rant was immediately debunked by the X Community Notes team. We wonder why such a clearly bonkers group of people are even allowed on the platform.
And to the surprise of absolutely no-one, WHO continues to take measures to undermine its waning credibility with another baseless attack on vaping…
As covered by the Daily Mail, the World Health Organisation once again made a mockery of itself by claiming that vaping can cause a seizure in 24 hours.
After users including @ChaunceyGardner asked the WHO to provide peer reviewed evidence or delete the erroneous statement, Community notes clarified that the claim was “based on inconclusive evidence utilizing studies that have not been peer reviewed”.
The incident caused longtime public health activists to start to question the approach of WHO to vaping and safer nicotine in general.
Steve Rolles, of Transform, slammed the WHO for the statement, saying that “their position on vaping is inexplicable & deeply irresponsible; unscientific scaremongering, preferencing smoked tobacco, & abandoning harm reduction pragmatism”.
