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(CNN Business) - Terrible rumors initially driven by Facebook algorithms have aroused the fear that men driving white vans are kidnapping women from across the United States for sex trafficking and to sell parts of their bodies.
While there is no evidence to suggest that this is happening, much less at the national and coordinated level, a series of viral Facebook posts created a domino effect that led the mayor of a major American city to issue a warning based on claims not checked.
The latest online induced panic shows how viral Facebook posts can stoke paranoia and make people believe that detecting something as common as a white van can be considered suspicious and connected to a national gang.
"Don't park near a white van," Baltimore Mayor Bernard "Jack" Young said in a television interview on Monday. "Be sure to keep your cell phone in case someone tries to kidnap it."
The mayor said that the Baltimore Police had not informed him of the apparent threat, but said he was "all over Facebook."
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On Tuesday, Matthew Jablow, spokesman for the Baltimore Police Department, told CNN Business that while the Department is aware of social media posts, it received "no reports of actual incidents."
In fact, although there is no solid evidence of such a phenomenon in Baltimore, unconfirmed reports of suspicious white vans in Baltimore and other US cities. They have been shared hundreds of thousands of times on Facebook in recent weeks and have been seen by millions of users on Facebook. At least one person driving a white van has reported that he was harassed by the rumors.
Baltimore City Councilman Kristerfer Burnett, co-chair of the Baltimore City Trafficking in Persons Collective, told CNN Business that he was worried that panic about white vans would distract the broader issue of human trafficking .
"We need to make sure there is accurate information, especially because Baltimore is a focus of human trafficking in the country," Burnett added.
He said the rumors had spread mainly through Facebook, "which I think is somewhat revealing given the national conversation about the ability and inability of Facebook to control the dissemination of inaccurate information on its platform."
In Georgia, police investigating reports of suspicious white vans have asked the public to call 911 instead of posting on social media.
Going viral
Sightings of "suspicious" white vans have been reported in Baltimore for years. For example, CNN Business found a 2016 publication of a woman who warned that there was a white van outside her home and that people should be careful because there was "a man in a white van kidnapping children."
Contacted by CNN Business Tuesday, the woman said she had no specific evidence to support the claim, but had heard it "many times" and was only trying to warn her friends that they have children.
Although that message barely received attention, there have been a lot of posts about white vans in Baltimore during the last month that have gone viral on Facebook and Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook.
On November 13, Saundra Murray, a Baltimore resident, posted Instagram photos of a white van in front of a gas station. Murray said two men in the van kept looking at her while they were in the store. Murray told CNN Business that he had seen the men in the store before he knew they were in a white van. He said he did not report the incident to the Police "because he did not have much information to report, but he wanted to post on [Instagram] so people would know what is happening."
Murray said he had seen social media reports of suspicious white vans, but that he thought people were exaggerating: mysterious white vans are a "big deal in the movies," he thought, and he thought that could have contributed to the exaggeration.
However, after his experience, he now believes that men and the van are "part of a bigger story, I don't think they are two random guys."
Baltimore Police have not received reports of actual incidents.
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Murray's post accumulated more than 3,200 likes on Instagram. A few days later, on November 17, another woman in Baltimore posted on Facebook screenshots of Murray's Instagram post. That Facebook post had been shared more than 2,000 times until Tuesday.
Another different post on Facebook, of a woman in Baltimore, on November 18, which was shared more than 5,000 times, showed the image of a white van in which she warned: “When you go out to the mall parking lot and see a truck like is parked next to your car, DO NOT GO TO YOUR CAR “.
The publication said that sex traffickers had "these vans equipped with insurance that are locked from the outside and, once inside, you can not leave."
But the publications not only became viral in Baltimore. A message on Facebook from a man in South Carolina on November 15 showed the photo of a white van with two external locks. The photo seemed to have been taken from Snapchat.
“IF YOU SEE ANY FURGONET AS IT IS CALLING 911, THIS IS USED FOR SEXUAL TRAFFIC,” said the post on Facebook.
The publication was extraordinarily shared 151,000 times.
Beyond Facebook
To help address its misinformation problem, Facebook has hired third-party data verifiers. On November 21, one of the company's partners, Lead Stories, conducted a fact check that said people don't need to worry particularly just because they see a van with external locks.
Lead Stories said construction workers commonly use external locks on trucks because they maintain expensive tools in their vehicles.
Data verification has been applied to some Facebook posts about white vans, which means that Facebook users who try to view those posts will receive an alert that the information is false.
But while that could help delay or stop the spread of such publications in the future, it cannot undo the damage done or prevent the information from going elsewhere. On Tuesday, CNN Business learned that the screenshots of the Facebook post circulated through an email list server for parents in a suburb of New York.
The biggest concern, of course, is not only fear on Facebook, but how it can spread to the real world. In Detroit, a home improvement specialist told local media, at the end of November, that he was harassed for driving a white van after he said that speculations about white vans became viral on Facebook in that city.
Brian Ries of CNN contributed to this report.
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