After the 2023 Maui wildfires killed more than 100 people and destroyed nearly 2,000 homes, thousands of social media users spread false claims about the fire's origin. Posts alleged the government used a "direct energy weapon" or laser to ignite the area, or that a "weather weapon" caused the disaster. Right-wing activists including the late Charlie Kirk amplified these theories. The Federal Emergency Management Agency detected accounts linked to China circulating "weather weapon" rumors. Other false claims alleged FEMA would seize homes of people who applied for emergency aid.
A broken power pole owned by the local electric utility actually sparked the fires against dry vegetation on a windy day, according to investigation findings.
Amber Silver, a professor of emergency management at the University at Albany, said disasters create "essentially all of the perfect conditions for the spread of misinformation." Victims need urgent facts but have almost no way to get reliable data about their situation.
Extreme weather events now occur at an escalating pace. At the same time, major social media companies have abandoned fact-checking and content moderation efforts. Government agencies face staff shortages. Generative AI has created new ways to source information. A report from the News Literacy Project found that a vast majority of teens encounter social media conspiracies, and a vast majority of teens who encounter those theories believe them.
A Department of Homeland Security study found that an inaccurate map tweeted during a 2017 California flood caused an unnecessary mass evacuation. Another study from the Inter-American Development Bank found that an earthquake in Mexico produced an 11 percent drop in people's trust in government. Research shows bad information after disasters has "led to resource misallocation, overwhelmed emergency services, and diverted attention away from genuine needs."
One example of conspiracy spread involved a 2018 photo of a Marathon Petroleum Refinery flare in Canton, Ohio. Social media users later attributed this old image, along with unrelated photos of a SpaceX rocket launch and a Chilean electrical explosion, as evidence of an energy weapon used in Maui. An Instagram user who posted the refinery photo acknowledged the error in a follow-up video, but an influential health food entrepreneur's account had already published a video claiming to show a "laser beam coming out of the sky" based on a screenshot of the original false post. That video received 432,000 views, over 40 times more views than the apology video.