Twitter is changing drastically since it has been bought by Elon Musk, as a blue check mark can now essentially be purchased for the price of eight dollars a month, causing chaos in the breaking news department on the social media website, where it is now even more difficult to tell real from fake.
Fake yet verified accounts will have more potential than ever to misinform or pull one over on Twitter users, which many sports fans fear can lead to disaster in the form of parody accounts posing as prominent journalists or reporters and breaking news that actually doesn't exist. It already happened earlier this week when a verified account posing as Aroldis Chapman announced a new three-year deal with the Yankees.
It happened again on Thursday, when a verified account pretending to be ESPN NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski announced that the Nets had released Kyrie Irving.
Out of date for the win pic.twitter.com/en8Iv8SSWB
— Chelle Belle (@ChellBelle39) November 10, 2022
The tweet was retweeted nearly 10,000 times and eclipsed 25,000 likes before the account was suspended and stripped of its blue check mark, but plenty of fans were already fooled by then.
Irving is still with the Nets and still serving his suspension.
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