As Hurricane Milton struck Florida and left a trail of destruction, trolls and politicians alike generated misinformation about the storm, questioned the government’s preparedness, and used this to the detriment of the Republican state. He called it a “simulation” aimed at
But after landing in the Atlantic, Walt Disney World in Orlando became a new target for conspiracy theorists’ propaganda.
On Thursday morning, a photo appeared on X (formerly Twitter) of a flooded promenade centered around Cinderella Castle at Disney World in Orlando.
“Hurricane Milton flooded Disney World in Orlando,” one known vector of disinformation about X wrote with a photo. X users quickly realized that this photo may have been created using an automatic AI image creation tool. The post has already been viewed over 300,000 times.
Other versions of the same allegedly deceptive post were also translated into Spanish and other languages and then spread across X. The platform has added a warning stating that the image is fake and generated by AI.
That didn’t stop RIA Novosti, one of Russia’s top state news agencies, from reposting the image on its official Telegram channel.
The post states, “Social media users share photos of Disneyland, Florida sinking in the wake of Hurricane Milton,” pointing to Disneyland, a theme park thousands of miles away in Anaheim, California. was incorrectly identified.
RIA Novosti’s post has already received more than 300,000 views.
In a storm update on its website, Disney World announced that the theme parks would be closed until October 10th, but did not mention the flooding and added, The department’s restaurants remain open.”
Disney did not immediately respond to questions about photos of Cinderella Castle flooding.
The disinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding Milton began long before the storm made landfall. Since last week, Donald Trump has been spreading lies about the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helen, claiming that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) “abandoned” residents of North Carolina, a battleground state in November’s presidential election. “It was a mistake.”
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), an extremism and disinformation watchdog, told the Guardian that hostile forces are using manipulated images and propaganda posts during crises to undermine Western democracies. He said he is known for letting people down.
Russia is one of the most notorious perpetrators of such tactics.
“It is well known that Kremlin-backed media outlets, as well as the Kremlin itself, often use natural disasters and political crises to create chaos and spread misinformation for their own benefit.” said Mustafa Ayad, ISD Executive Director for Africa, the Middle East and Asia. “The use of this image is no different.”
Far-right trolls, through online conversations such as Telegram, used the suspicions surrounding Helen as a catalyst to seize the moment Milton began to gain momentum toward Florida.
A few days ago, a popular extremist channel posted the word “simulation” and accused the government of creating the hurricane.
Another post from the same channel, viewed thousands of times, went further, posting an image of the storm approaching Florida in the form of an anti-Semitic cartoon.
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The post referenced Israel’s military operations in the Middle East and said, “Florida and everyone else whose lives are being destroyed while our tax dollars go to devil worshipers and people who hate white Christians. Please pray for me.”
Today, an adjacent channel known for fabricating neo-Nazis picked up the news and accused the government of using “stratospheric aerosols” to create Milton.
Some of the most blatant misinformation comes from Capitol Hill.
On Monday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene doubled down on her track record of misinformation directly blaming the federal government for storm-making.
“Climate change is the new coronavirus,” a Georgia representative wrote to X. “Ask your government if the weather is being manipulated or controlled.
“Are you paying?” she asked casually. “Of course I do.”
Last night, as Milton was attacking Florida, Joe Biden made it clear that the Republican presidential candidate was in the middle of a torrent of disinformation.
“Frankly, these lies are un-American,” Biden said in a speech at the White House. “Former President Trump led this onslaught of lies.”
The litany of falsehoods has gotten so bad that Fema Party chief DeAnne Criswell has criticized how the organization responded to the storm, ranging from accusations that funds were being diverted from storm victims to immigrants. has been forced to respond to conspiracy theories. Helen is a kind of meteorologist Frankenstein.
