UpdatFake insider Twitter accounts are everywhere, and they regularly fool media members and outlets. The latest example comes from a fake Adam Schefter account that tweeted that the New England Patriots would sign Colin Kaepernick.
Peter King of Sports Illustrated‘s The MMQB quote-tweeted it with a comment before realizing his error and deleting. Here’s the screengrab:
ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. was also fooled. He tweeted this apology, then deleted it as well:
Van Natta then tweeted this:
What's the point? Do these shut-ins think they hand out prizes for the most verified Twitter accounts they can fool?
— Don Van Natta Jr. (@DVNJr) October 31, 2017
King also apologized:
My fault. Sorry, all.
— Peter King (@peter_king) October 31, 2017
.@SI_PeteKing is a pretty gullible fellow.
— Peter King (@peter_king) October 31, 2017
30 months would be better. https://t.co/5tnFj1kIPi
— Peter King (@peter_king) October 31, 2017
Update: Around The Horn’s Tony Reali also got fooled, but ahead of the show:
https://twitter.com/AroundtheHorn/status/925475242507563008
Van Natta does raise a good question of why anyone bothers with this. The comments from the teenagers who impersonated NBA reporter Adrian Wojnarowski (then of Yahoo, now of ESPN) in 2014 to David Roth for a SB Nation piece may provide a clue:
We’ve seen people do it before, and it just popped into our heads a little bit after 12 a.m. It’s just so, so easy to make a fake account with a random email. It was set up in about five minutes. Not to mention the fact that people jump to conclusions very quickly. We knew if someone big RT’ed one of those tweets, we’d fake out a ton of fans. That’s exactly what happened too. Didn’t take very long to get those “OH MY GOODNESS” tweets.
…We did it because we wanted to see how gullible people could be. I know everyone is quick to believe what they read on Twitter, and that’s why we did this. It’s just entertaining to see people go nuts over something that hasn’t really happened and completely ignore the fact that the account was fake. No disrespect to the sportswriters that actually fell for it. I know they’re just trying to do their jobs, and it just so happened that our fake account resembled that of the real Woj. But we did get what we expected. Plenty of overreactions, humorous responses and some hate.
And this fake Schefter account seems to have produced about the same. (It’s since vanished.) So whoever set it up certainly managed to troll a couple of prominent NFL writers. What a productive thing to do with your time.