LeBron James is one of the biggest athletes in the entire world, and his fans hang on to everything he says. If you were to look up his name on Twitter, you would see that there are numerous accounts pretending to be the NBA star. These accounts are mostly harmless and simply engage in hero worship.
Unfortunately, Twitter has a brand-new verification rule that can help aid in the spread of misinformation. For instance, users can purchase a verification badge for just $8 per month. This is Elon Musk's latest effort in his attempt to become the world's most dunked-on billionaire.
LeBron Gets Impersonated
As you can imagine, someone took advantage of this incredible opportunity and purchased verification for their fake LeBron account. The user then went on to craft a tweet, pretending to be the Lakers superstar. In the image below, you can see that the user acted as if LeBron was demanding a trade. If it were real, this would be the biggest news in the NBA.
Altogether, this is the most glaring issue with the new verification rules. The spread of misinformation is about to be looking like Wilt Chamberlain in his 100-point game. There are various sports reporters who are being impersonated right now, including Adam Schefter.
In the tweet below, the fake Schefter claimed that Josh McDaniels of the Las Vegas Raiders was about to be fired. Unlike the LeBron impersonator, this fake account has yet to be suspended. Additionally could lead to a lot more confusion, down the line, although it doesn't seem like Musk actually cares.
Overall, this is very bad for the Twitter platform. Despite some accounts being suspended, there is still plenty of opportunity for impersonations to continue. As it stands, navigating Twitter as a casual fan has just become a landmine of misinformation, and it will likely continue down that road for some time.
Coincidentally, new social media websites are beginning to pop up, although they aren't exactly viable right now. At this point, fans will just have to adapt to this new reality.
[Via]