Megan Ashlee Davis, a student at College Station in Texas, says the backlash she has received over the fake story featuring her real mugshot is ruining her life.
“It’s probably like my worst nightmare coming to reality,” Davis told Chron. “People are making very inappropriate comments or AI-generated things with my mug shot.”
The Facebook account “Pure Videos” created the fake post and shared it with its 1.7 million followers. Most of the page’s posts are works of fiction, according to Chron. It appeared that the post featuring Davis’ mugshot had been taken down or made private as of Sunday.
While the post didn’t include Davis’ name, and the fake story took place hundreds of miles away, people were still able to track her down and harass her online.
“People are disgusting out there — and scary,” she said.
Davis’ mugshot stems from a night out drinking in August, where she was arrested for public intoxication. She is currently a college student who works, and a few weeks before her arrest, her mother died, she told Chron.
“I was still very like hurt and angry and I just don’t know,” Davis said about the night of her arrest. “I guess at the time I thought I was OK and then I started drinking whatever, went to jail, and that was really embarrassing itself.”
Though the original post appeared to have been taken down, copies of it have sprung up across countless accounts on both Facebook and X. The post has only been factchecked on X, not Facebook.
“It’s still there and more content is being created, more things are being said, and I just feel overlooked and unseen and unheard,” she said.
Earlier this year, in April, Meta, which owns Facebook, stopped using third-party fact-checking in the U.S., meaning Facebook stopped penalizing fake news. Ever since, similar “rage bait” posts with fake stories have been spread across the platform like wildfire.
Meanwhile, Olive Garden even attempted to step in, commenting on one of the phony posts that Davis isn’t employed by them, according to Chron.
"This person does not work for Olive Garden, and the incident described never occurred. The page that originally shared this false story has posted similar hoaxes involving multiple brands,” the restaurant chain wrote, though other commentators quickly urged them to “prove it.”
It was not immediately clear when or why the post that included Davis’ mugshot was taken down.
TMC Media, which owns Pure Videos on Facebook did not immediately respond to messages sent by The Independent.
