They may have come as a text, voice note or blurry picture forwarded by a “friend of a friend” – and most of them were scarcely credible. Here’s the truth behind a few of the most heart-stopping coronavirus rumours that we debunked at the time.
1. Tanks never arrived on the streets
What did the message say? In the middle of March, grainy pictures of military vehicles on highways began cropping up in WhatsApp chats and Facebook groups. They had captions like “On the M25!” and “Tanks expected in Newcastle tomorrow”. They were shared with warnings about mass civil unrest that would, ostensibly, prompt a military crackdown.
How viral was it? The biggest platform for these rumours was WhatsApp. Because it’s private and encrypted, it’s impossible to know exactly how many people saw such messages – but we can conservatively estimate they were received by tens of thousands. Weeks later, people who run local Facebook groups told the BBC that they were still seeing mentions of alleged military plans for tanks on the streets.