Verified Twitter Account Spreads Fake News About Pentagon Attack, Goes Viral

Monday morning shook Twitter users after a verified Twitter account that goes by the name Bloomberg Feed posted a picture of an explosion near the Pentagon Complex in Washington DC. The image features a towering mass of black smoke clouding the entire area.

However, the news soon turned out to be fake. It was later identified that the image may have been created using an AI generator. Fire department captain Nate Hiner pitched in and explained that one look at the picture was enough to know it was fake.

Just looking at the image itself, that's not the Pentagon. There's no building that looks like that in Arlington.Fire department captain Nate Hiner

What might have seemed like a harmless prank to someone ended up perplexing millions of people. The tweet went viral immediately and was even noticed and picked up by other popular accounts, such as the Russian state media organ, Russia Today.

It's also believed that the news had a significant impact on the stock market. Shortly after its existence, there was a 25-point movement in the S&P 500, and the Dow Jones Industrial Index noticed a drop of 85 points within 4 minutes.

Thankfully, the market recovered shortly after. Although there's little evidence to imply that these movements were caused by the said fake news, comparing the timeline of each event, it's highly possible.

Why The Pentagon Hoax" Event Is A Bigger Issue Than Usual Fake News?

Although social media has always been a hub of fake news, this incident brought a bigger issue to light. Many users, such as reporter Andy Campbell took to his Twitter handle to point out this event as an example of how dangerous the pay-to-verify system that was recently launched by Elon Musk is.

Previously, when a post came from verified accounts, it was safe to believe that it was legit. That's because the prestigious verification marks were only given to recognized public figures, celebrities, and organizations.

Now that verification is available to anyone willing to pay $8 a month, it has become harder to distinguish troll accounts from authentic ones.

The advancement of AI tools that lets anyone create life-like pictures has contributed to the growing trend of fake news and hoaxes.

Although people already know that the blue tick is now a paid feature, years of conditioning will make users immediately assume that any news from a verified account is legit.

Renee DiResta, research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory, rightly pointed out that it's not an AI issue but rather a situation where what once was considered signals of legitimacy, aka the blue tick, are now useless tools.

Twitter's Response To The Unfortunate EventThe tweet was also deleted from other larger accounts that reposted the story.

This is a matter of serious concern. Photoshopping mermaids in the ocean is a different story, but creating fake news about a US government building has given Twitter quite a jolt.

After the news was debunked by authorities, Twitter quickly deleted the post and banned the fake account that was in no way related to the original Bloomberg Feed. However, the Twitter team remained unavailable for comment.

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