A video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seeming to slur her speech at an event tore through the internet, gaining steam on Facebook. Share after share, it spread to the point of going viral.
The altered video from May 2019 was a slowed-down version of the actual speech the California Democrat gave but was being promoted as real. Even though Facebook acknowledged the video was fake, the company allowed it to stay on the platform, where it continued to be reshared. That exponential resharing was like rocket fuel to the manipulated video.