Who could have predicted that Monday night’s shirtless display on national TV would be only the second most troubling development for Adam Schefter’s business model this week?
With new Twitter owner Elon Musk supposedly attempting to combat trolls and bots by opening the floodgates for verified accounts by giving anyone and everyone who pays $8 per month a blue checkmark, someone who plunked down the cash for a phony Schefter account duped many with a false report that the Raiders had fired coach Josh McDaniels.
Jordan Liles of Snopes.com has the story. Many were fooled by the phony news, with the blue check going a long way toward boosting the ruse.
It’s the first example of the chaos that could arise when it comes to relying on Twitter for news, whatever the subject matter. And it could dramatically affect Schefter’s overall approach, which so heavily relies on using Twitter to “break” NFL news that otherwise will be announced within minutes.
If Twitter loses much or most or all of its credibility, how will affect those who need that firehose to promote and advance their personal and corporate brands?
We enjoy a strong platform on Twitter, and we’ll maintain it. But PFT has been and continues to be our primary platform for collecting, breaking, analyzing, and/or disseminating NFL news. Here, you won’t have to worry about any of it being fake or phony or inaccurate.
At least not intentionally.