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At 2:29pm, Adam Schefter of ESPN reported news that would shake up the NFL: Josh McDaniels, head coach of the Oakland Raiders, was fired.
The tweet racked up more than 3,000 likes and thousands of retweets, as all Adam Schefter tweets do. After all, he’s the primary source of breaking news around the NFL and he is verified on Twitter so people can tell at a quick glance they are looking at real news from a trusted source.
Except, it wasn’t Schefter who tweeted that—despite the account’s display name reading “Adam Schefter” and a blue checkmark appearing next to it. It was AdamSchefterN0T, an account created earlier that day by a 19-year-old college kid who had $8 to spare.
The phony Schefter page was set up to be identical to the real one; it had the exact same avatar and display name. It also had a blue checkmark, previously only given to accounts to indicate the person operating it was who they claimed to be. It was only on the account page that users saw a pinned tweet stating, “I am not Adam Schefter this is a parody account.”
The operator of that account—which was suspended after a half-dozen or so tweets, most of which went viral—told the Daily Dot that he’s a computer science major who loves football, and typically uses Twitter to keep in touch with friends and talk about the sport they love.
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/elon-...adam-schefter/
