Tech

‘Made me fall out of my chair’: A ‘charged with murder’ fact-check about a first date success story is the ‘wildest’ Community Note ever

Nothing can prepare you for this.

Photo of Katherine Huggins

Katherine Huggins

John Poulos and woman taking selfie with twitter community note that reads 'The user who posted this tweet is now charged with murdering the woman in question'

Twitter users were stunned by a Community Note recently added to a seven-month-old tweet about a man’s first date.

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The tweet in question was a response to someone asking, “What was your craziest first date?”

“Invited a Colombian woman on vacation without meeting her first – now we’re getting married,” the man replied in December.

Under the seemingly benign tweet, however, is a new footnote that left many Twitter users stunned.

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“The user who posted this tweet is now charged with murdering the woman in question,” reads the note.

https://twitter.com/ptrain67/status/1604143546411651074

The note also linked to a Daily Mail article with additional information about the charges against John Poulos, who posted the tweet on his acocunt @ptrain67, which has not tweeted since November 2022.

The divorced father of three is facing charges of aggravated femicide and concealment of evidence in connection to the Jan. 22 murder of Valentina Trespalacios, whose remains were found inside a suitcase in a dumpster.

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Prosecutors in Colombia are seeking more than 35 years in prison.

Community Notes “aim to create a better-informed world by empowering people on Twitter to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading Tweets,” according to Twitter.

But it appears that nobody was ready for that kind of context.

One user called it “one of the wildest” Community Notes ever, noting that “it adds a lot of context.”

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“Twitter went next level with @CommunityNotes,” commented another.

https://twitter.com/alziendoor/status/1681314582118420482
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A cursory review of John Poulos’ Twitter page shows he retweeted controversial influencer Andrew Tate, who is currently under house arrest in Romania while facing rape and human trafficking charges.

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