No one could have been prepared for the horrific events of Friday night that shook the world. As with any terrorist attack, conspiracy theories always rise up in the aftermath suggesting the incident was a false flag operation, or carried out by different perpetrators than reported by the media. That’s what makes it so disconcerting when a conspiracy theory like this arises: a news spambot predicted the Paris attacks two days before they happened, as if people in the media were in the know and the tweet had accidentally been published ahead of schedule.

People online were baffled by a tweet from a Twitter bot that described the current death toll two days before the killings actually occurred. The account, which is now suspended, automatically created headlines using tweets of a real news account called PZFeed Breaking News Feed (@pzf). What seems to have happened is that the bot mashed together the following tweets to create the eerie tweet published on November 11. Spambots are strange, faceless beings but this account, that seemed to tweet several times an hour, mashes up news stories in 140 characters to create a bizarre feed of strangely assembled misinformation.

The two above are both true stories; one refers to a Nigerian mosque attack and the other is about the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris this year. Just looking at other tweets the bot account has sent out shows how ridiculous, confusing and irrational its fake stories are. But also that the likelihood of the two stories being combined in some way one day was reasonable, if scarily timed.

Since the bot and the actual news account’s handles are similar (@PZbooks and @pzf, respectfully) and their Twitter pictures are practically matching, if the bot had been tweeting in the early stages of the attack it could have caused damage, were it thrown into the maelstrom of misinformation that swirls around online in the wake of tragedy. Vigilance is crucial when absorbing what’s happening.

Before the account was suspended, the tweet had been RTd nearly 8,000 times. As it stands, the tweet was little more than unfortunate luck – and strange coincidence. Sadly, it also highlights that atrocities are all too common – a bot combined two previous disasters to "predict" another with disturbing accuracy.