A Pakistani man living in Australia has spoken of his "deep trauma" and described his life turning into a "nightmare" after his photograph was falsely circulated on social media, identifying him as one of the perpetrators of the deadly Bondi beach terror attack.
The False Accusation and Its Immediate Fallout
Naveed Akram, a 30-year-old business owner from New South Wales, found himself at the centre of a dangerous misinformation storm following the shooting at Sydney's Bondi beach, which left 16 people dead. The chaos began after police identified the two alleged shooters on Monday as father and son Sajid Akram, 50, and Naveed Akram, 24.
As news spread online that one of the attackers shared the name Naveed Akram, the innocent man's photos were widely shared on platforms like X and Facebook, wrongly labelling him as a culprit. Mainstream media outlets, including the Jerusalem Post and World Is One news, also published incorrect details about his education, further cementing the false narrative.
"It was extremely disturbing for me," said Akram. "As soon as I saw that my photo was being shared as the shooter, I came home instantly as I knew it was very dangerous. I was so traumatised."
The Spread of Malicious Misinformation
Many of the accounts sharing his image were based in India, where right-wing influencers seized on the alleged Pakistani origin of the attacker to push anti-Pakistan rhetoric, without verifying the identity of the man they were targeting. Notably, none of the false posts on Facebook or X were given warning labels or community notes by the platforms' fact-checking systems to flag the misinformation.
Akram was not the only victim of false reports. In the aftermath of the shooting, one X post with over 8 million views incorrectly claimed the shooter was an IDF soldier, while another falsely identified him as a Lebanese man of Palestinian descent. Even the hero of the hour, 43-year-old father-of-two Ahmed al-Ahmed, who tackled a gunman, was subject to false claims, with users saying he was a 47-year-old IT worker with a British name.
This false hero narrative was repeated by X's own AI chatbot, Grok, which told users the incorrect story. Experts noted that the failure to apply a community note to Grok's false post for over 10 hours highlighted the breakdown of fact-checking during crises.
A Plea for Responsibility and Safety
Feeling unprotected, Akram went to the police, who advised him to simply disable his social media accounts. Unable to get help from X directly, he made a video pleading for the false posts to be taken down. "Lots of these fake posts are still up on social media. I'm still scared to go outside even to do the shopping," he said. "My life could still be at risk because of this."
He called on social media giants to take responsibility for hosting and amplifying dangerous misinformation. The incident exposes the rapid and damaging real-world consequences of unverified online accusations, where lives can be put in peril by a single viral post.
Further adding to the toxic information environment, false claims circulated that Muslims in Sydney's Bankstown had set off fireworks to celebrate the attack—they were actually for a Christmas carols event in Padstow. Someone also falsely labelled the alleged shooter's Bonnyrigg home address as a mosque on Google Maps.
