The “zero patient” who started the hoax on Pablo 'Married' without meaning to

We will call him Marcos. It is not his real name, but he fears that if we publish his identity he will be harassed on social networks and this story will end up damaging him professionally. "It is sad and a little absurd, but so is what has happened with the photo," he says by phone. Well, Marcos shares the computer with which he works with his office mates, and the one he turned on last Wednesday 6 May had a website translator installed. He is Spanish, but he has been living in the United Kingdom for years, where he works for a major media outlet. As his workday started, he opened the front pages of online newspapers. When he opened elpais.com , the translator detected that the page was in Spanish and offered him an English translation.The main news at that time was the direct of the debate to extend the state of alarm and its headline announced the abstention of the Popular Party, after a speech of great Pablo Casado's harshness The translator offered Marcos his interpretation: “Married announces the abstention of the PP after a harsh speech against Sánchez ”.

The machine translator interpreted the name of the PP leader as married (married, marital status). “I saw it and it amused me. So I took a photo and sent it to one of my WhatsApp groups, in which there are about 30 people, some of them journalists. They laughed. Two minutes later they asked me if it was true and I explained it to them. But someone had already forwarded it. Ten or fifteen minutes later they asked again if the photo was mine because someone had already received it from somewhere else, ”he says from the United Kingdom.

The photo that Marcos found funny took just over an hour to become a widely spread hoax accusing the English version of EL PAÍS of translating the politician's surname in this way. Its expansion was helped by politicians and journalists who shared the image without checking it and disqualified the newspaper. It is an example of how, once sent, the sender of the message loses all control over it.

Finding the “zero patient” of an internet hoax, as in this case, is something exceptional. The normal thing is that we never know who has put it into circulation. A few years ago, there were tools that helped to track viral messages on social networks and allowed - sometimes - to untangle the skein of thread in search of the origin. That totally changed with the arrival and popularization of WhatsApp. Messages in this app are shared without trace of the origin. They do not allow you to track who sent it first or how many times it has been shared. Every time someone forwards a message, it breaks the thread and the possibility of knowing who started the chain. The context, like Marcos' explanation to his friends, is lost along the way and becomes a manipulable message. The skein becomes a jumble of many unrelated threads.

In the case of Pablo Married's photography we would not have reached the origin either if it were not for that “zero patient” who came to us. Last Thursday the 7th, after a day of work, having seen how the matter had “gotten out of hand in a tremendous way” and with the children already in bed, Marcos decided to send a message to the Letters mailbox to the director of EL PAÍS that we reproduce below:

I am writing to apologize, mine is the photo of its cover that yesterday thousands of people shared as true calling Married to Pablo Casado. Nothing is further from my intention. I live and work in England, yesterday when I got to the office I opened their website and the computer automatically translated the headline into English ... It was funny so I sent the photo to a WhatsApp group. A joke like so many that alleviate the current situation and uncertainty. A joke, I thought, innocent. My friends laughed and although I quickly explained what it was ... it was late, Twitter had put its machinery to work. Even journalists and politicians, who are expected to have more training and rigor, repeated the message convinced (and convincing) of the clumsiness of El País. Sadder it seemed to me to see the hatred and contempt that many users gave towards professionals who at one point had become "useless, monkeys with pistols, pamphlet ..."

The freedom [of some] to share hoaxes [and insult] makes one want to stop the world and get off ...

Once again, my apologies.

In addition to this message, we have had access to the conversation where you can see how he sent the photo to his group at 10.22 (11.22 PEN). Reviewing the recording of the debate of that day, it can be verified that Santiago Abascal pronounced at those moments that can be seen in the live broadcast of the cover of EL PAÍS: "Prohibiting a demonstration in cars that did not pose any type of danger."

Marcos was surprised how the hoax grew on Twitter, even supported by public figures. “At first I thought about answering a tweet. I have my account with few followers, I do not write and my family follows me and that's it. But I saw that it had become a ball so big that it didn't matter what it said, "he says. The PP deputy in the Madrid Assembly Almudena Negro and the Vox MEP and journalist Hermann Tertsch were some of those who published the image without contrasting and assuring that this was the English edition of EL PAÍS. After EL PAÍS's social media team spent a good part of the day responding to those false messages, some deleted or rectified it, like Tertsch. Negro's tweet was still posted this May 13, a week later. A few hours after this article came to light, Negro deleted the tweet with the image and the phrase: "Lo País in English is as serious as in Spanish."

El País says that the image that circulates with a translation of an English headline of Casado as “Married” is not an original publication of El País, so we must deduce that it is a forgery, a bad faith montage to discredit this newspaper. So I proceed to withdraw it. https://t.co/i0XPqLWiu7

The Country in English is as serious as in Spanish. pic.twitter.com/3WZHZdkDLq

Marcos says he was scared to see the reaction of the networks to his photograph. “You are afraid of seeing the hatred with which many people respond. That absurd hatred. The problem is that it does not matter whether it is false or true. The question is to insult, "he says.

Disinformation by WhatsApp

Marcos is one of the contacts that these days are trying to deny the false news, partly because he has received training in his work on this topic. "I am the heavyweight of the groups," he jokes. During the pandemic, WhatsApp has limited mass message forwarding to try to stop disinformation. The measure only allows forwarding to one contact or group at a time and has caused virality to drop by 70%, according to data from the company itself.

"So much education is lacking ... The youngest will have to be taught, because it will only increase. The problem is that something remains. Because, although there are people who retract and say that it was a joke, the idea remains, "he reflects.

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