U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has tweeted about misinformation before, including in 2021 when she alerted her followers to a “false tweet that’s been photoshopped to look like I sent out a call for a ‘purge.’”
A similar doctored image is circulating on social media now.
“Instagram needs to TERMINATE @realbrooklynp8triot They are a right-wing media page posting CONSERVATIVE content! Their page is full of misinformation. DO NOT follow them! Why is Instagram allowing this?,” the supposed tweet says.
An Instagram post sharing the image, and urging people to follow the account in the fake tweet, was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
The first clue that this isn’t an authentic tweet? Ocasio-Cortez’s name in the image. Although it shows the same Twitter handle, @AOC, and blue verified check mark, whoever edited this forgot the hyphen between Ocasio-Cortez’s surname.
The tweet doesn’t appear on her account, and in looking for credible news reports and responses from people about her effort to have Instagram ban someone, we found no evidence that she ever tweeted such a demand. We did find another image with what looks like a similarly worded tweet from Vice President Kamala Harris that someone shared on Twitter in May.
“Wow!” the tweet says. “@realbrooklynp8triot is trying to take down the Biden administration with false claims of having information on corruption within the White House. Do not follow him! He is lying! We are not corrupt #Kamala2024.”
This tweet also doesn’t appear on Harris’ Twitter account, nor in PolitWoops, a ProPublica database that tracked the deleted tweets of public officials. (Politwoops isn’t currently working — the last tracked deleted tweet is from November — so we couldn’t search for the alleged Ocasio-Cortez tweet.)
We rate claims that Ocasio-Cortez tweeted this call to action to Instagram False.
