PVV senator Marjolein Faber responded to her tweet in which she unjustly said that the media was withholding the "North African appearance" of the perpetrator in a Groningen stabbing two weeks ago. She called it "awkward", but still hasn't removed the tweet from Twitter.
"Since I never reveal my source, I should have taken this into account before posting this tweet. With this in mind, I should not have sent the tweet. Was awkward", she said on Twitter on Monday night.
PVV Senator Marjolein Faber is under fire over a tweet in which she suggested that the media deliberately withheld the "North African" ethnicity of a man suspected of stabbing three people at a Groningen terrace last week. Days after two of the three victims refuted this claim, describing the suspect as having pale skin and gray hair, the populist politician's tweet is still online.
The Dutch Public Prosecution Service is concerned that so-called deepfakes will be used for crimes like blackmail, extortion or even election meddling as the technology becomes more and more accessible. "We have to realize that if we see something, we can no longer just believe it", prosecutor Lodewijk van Zwieten said to NOS. "Soon you can easily make a video of something that did not actually happen."
"Most of the fake news that Dutch people come across online comes from our own country", Peter Bruger, a researcher at Leiden University, said to newspaper Trouw based on his research.
Facebook will not be able to guarantee that the company is transparent about the placement of political advertisements before the provincial states elections next month, Minister Kasja Ollongren of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations wrote in a letter to parliament, NOS reports.
The Dutch government is launching an online campaign against fake news in February, in the run up to the Provincial State and European Parliament elections next year. The campaign must make Dutch voters more aware of the possible presence of disinformation and help people recognize it, Minister Kasja Ollongren of Home Affairs said in a letter to parliament, NOS reports.
The campaign will be spread on social media and last for around four months, through the Provincial States election on March 20th and up to the European Parliament elections on May 23rd.
A Facebook post stating that the 34 suspects in the trial around a highway blockade during the national Sinterklaas arrival last year were sentenced to prison, was massively shared on Facebook. The post on the page 'Ik Ben Zwarte Piet Fan' was shared over 25 thousand times in the 23 hours it was online. It has since been removed, NOS reports.
According to the post, all 34 suspects were sentenced to 18 months in prison, six of which conditionally suspended. This is misinformation.
