The meme that supposedly contained harmful messages initially gained traction in South America and eventually spread worldwide.
Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.Facebook pages of local police departments, celebrities like Kim Kardashian, and even email blasts from principals to concerned parents across the U.S. warned of a viral meme that claimed children viewing an image called “Momo” while browsing YouTube could result in suicide or self-harm.
Dire warnings about the image, which is a picture of a Japanese sculpture featuring the face of a ghostly young girl atop a bird’s body, began as a chain letter that was sent around the messaging app in Bolivia, Argentina and Mexico last year. Mirroring its trajectory in the U.S., the meme drew various warnings from local police and local news broadcasts about its potential danger, before dying out in less than a month.
According to Daniel Funke, who focuses on misinformation at the journalism nonprofit Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for journalism, WhatsApp’s features were pivotal in the spread of Momo and other forms of disinformation throughout South America, where the app is heavily used among smartphone owners.
showed code words were embedded within some YouTube comments underneath videos on the platform that helped pedophiles better find content featuring young children. Warnings about the dangers of Momo videos in the U.S. were heavily promoted on Facebook this week, but not just by trolls and other traditional disinformation agents.
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