Osaka Authorities Warn of Fake Tweets after Quake

June 19, 2018

Osaka- Local authorities have issued warnings of fake Twitter posts after a strong earthquake rocked Osaka and neighboring prefectures in the Kansai western Japan region Monday.

A false Twitter message that says a zebra has escaped was posted with an image of the animal about an hour after the quake occurred, a post retweeted over 300 times by Monday night.

Another false tweet says a train has derailed on a local Keihan rail line.

A tweet apparently from a passenger that says a train nearly derailed may have developed into a message that says the train actually derailed, said an official at Keihan Electric Railway Co.

Some false tweets were racially offensive. One of them reads, "It is highly likely that Chinese and Koreans will do bad things when an earthquake occurs in Kansai."

A man was arrested after falsely tweeting that a lion had escaped from a zoo following powerful earthquakes that hit Kumamoto Prefecture, southwestern Japan, in April 2016.

In a Twitter message issued after the Osaka quake, Kumamoto Mayor Kazufumi Onishi urged users not to retweet unconfirmed posts easily. Jiji Press