“Iowa is just the start guys,” wrote one Twitter
user, who has a profile picture of himself in a
Sanders T-shirt. “The Democratic Party will not
allow Bernie to win.”
The online conspiracy theories, in some
cases, were based on easily debunked or
misleading claims.
For example, Facebook and Twitter posts falsely
suggested that former Democratic presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton, Sanders’ opponent in
the 2016 primary, had a hand in developing the
ill-fated app used to collect the Iowa results.
Further fueling that distrust was that three of
the senior executives at Shadow Inc., which
created the app, previously worked for Clinton’s
failed campaign.