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Joe Vesey-Byrne
Oct 02, 2017
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@m8cho/Twitter (R) @hermanndayz screengrabs
At least 50 people have died and more than 400 in hospital after a gunman opened fire on crowds at a country music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada.
In the wake of one of the worst mass shootings in modern American history online trolls shared their standard responses to a tragedy.
Hoaxes such as these are posted after tragedies, in part to see if more trusting internet users will retweet them, and also for the thrill of being hectored by people who uncover the hoax.
The following are recurrent hoaxes that you should not believe.
Comedian Sam Hyde 'identified' as the shooter.
Multiple accounts, hours into the incident, shared photos of comedian Sam Hyde and claimed he was a Muslim convert 'Samir Al-Hajeed'.
The shooter was identified by police as Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old.
An image of Hyde has in the past been associated with shootings in Orlando, the 2015 San Bernadino attack, and several other terrorist incidents.
The 'Sam Hyde is the shooter' meme reportedly dates back to 2015.
It is a generic response from trolls who post it after an attack involving fire arms.
'Jack Sins'
User @immryx shared a picture of a man he claimed was his missing father.
The photo which was tweeted on Monday was in fact of porn star Johnny Sins.
Mashable asked the hoaxer why they were spreading this untruth, to which they replied 'I think you know why,' 'for the retweets'.
Despite apologising to Mashable for doing this, the tweet remains live.
This type of hoax was also done by an account using the same profile picture as @immryx after the Manchester attack.
Taylor Joshuas - a fake 'victim'
Another fake victim account is that of 'Taylor Joshuas'.
Shared from the troll account @winterr, it and the account have been deleted, but responses to it remain online.
Missing footballers
Arsenal attacking midfielder Mesut Ozil is not missing, but at least one account has shared a photo of him, claiming it's their brother 'a practising Muslim', who went missing during the Las Vegas shooting.
Although the account @fuckoffcahill is still active, the tweet in question has been deleted.
Ozil is a practising Muslim, and the 'Ozil meme' is regularly deployed during missing persons incidents.
Other accounts have also used photos of Chelsea forward Eden Hazard.
Similarly, he is not actually missing, and was not involved in the Las Vegas shooting.
In August, the far right website Breitbart used an image of German international footballer Lukas Podolski for a story about people smugglers using jet skis to access mainland Europe.