Britt Stokes saw the first baffling tweet on Monday, June 1st. It showed two images of bricks stacked with a delivery tag from Acme Brick, where Stokes is director of marketing. The Twitter post suggested the company left the bricks intentionally to be used in protests in Frisco, a Dallas suburb.
Unverified reports have spread about the recent nationwide protests against police brutality almost since they began. Several news publications ran stories on piles of bricks found near protest sites. A Fox News cable segment focused on the "mysterious" bricks; another cited a Department of Justice probe into the involvement of antifa, favourite scourge of President Trump.
Alex Jones, the well-known right-wing conspiracy theorist, started his June 2 radio show with this theory. "Ladies and Gentleman, we've now discovered who is delivering bricks to over 20 cities," Jones said. "It's Acme Brick, owned by Berkshire Hathaway and Bill Gates. Can't make that up." "Our teams have been working to find and remove violating activity since the protests started," said a spokeswoman for Facebook. A spokeswoman for Twitter declined to comment; TikTok didn't respond to a request for comment. None of the companies answered a question about whether they were coordinating efforts to curb misinformation around the recent protests.