Fake tweets from Twitter Blue verified users sparked fear online after Monday’s Nashville shooting that killed six people, including three children.
The tweet, which appears to be a screenshot of a tweet sent by Nashville’s WSMV-TV station, quotes the father of one of the children killed Monday. The quote is fake and WSMV did not send the tweet.
The bogus citation claims that the victim’s parent said, “I will fight every fiber of my being” to end the “transgender evil.”
The shooter, Audrey Hale, was reportedly transgender.
WSMV confirmed in a separate tweet that it never posted the quote.
The original post from user @Trad_West_Art, who has a verified badge for subscribing to Twitter’s premium service, appears to have been deleted. According to screenshots, the tweet was viewed more than 130,000 times before it was deleted.
According to Alex Kaplan of Media Matters for America, the post first appears on the Gab account.
The fake tweets followed conservative outrage over the shooter’s gender identity, despite the apparent lack of outrage over gender and identity in other mass shootings. The post also raised questions about how Twitter Blue and Twitter’s new ad-hoc checkmark system could do harm, especially in times of national tragedy.
The incident follows an announcement from Twitter last week Users who are verified on the platform but are not Twitter Blue subscribers will lose their verification on April 1. CEO Elon Musk later clarified The verification of people belonging to “verified organizations” remains intact, but it is unclear how that affiliation works.
Musk too Said This week, “only verified accounts” will be eligible to appear on Twitter’s “For You” recommendations tab, essentially giving Twitter Blue subscribers a larger audience, regardless of what they tweet.
Twitter users were quick to react to this bogus tweet as a sign of what was to come.
“Get a little taste of what happens when the old blue checks are removed and this bs is doubled,” said one user. Said.
“My account was suspended 1 day late and I can’t wait to have it reactivated 1 hour later.” Said another.
We crawl the web so you don’t have to.
Sign up for the Daily Dot newsletter to have the internet’s best and worst in your inbox every day.
*First published: March 29, 2023 5:28 PM CDT
Jacob Sites
Jacob Seitz is a freelance journalist from Columbus, Ohio with an interest in the intersection of culture and politics.
