On Monday, a fake image that purported to show an explosion near Pentagon went viral briefly on Twitter. Fact-checkers scrambled to correct the false claim after it was spread by several verified accounts.
As of late April, verified users on Twitter are people who have paid $8 per month for the company’s “Blue” subscription service, which gives them a blue check mark a href=”https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-blue”>along with some other perks/a>. However, this service no longer confirms the user’s identity. Since late April, verified Twitter users are those who pay $8 per month to subscribe to the “Blue” service. This service gives users a blue checkmark and some other benefits. However, the service does not confirm the identity of the user.
An account with the handle of @CBKNews121 shared the image on Twitter for the first time at 8:42 am. ET. This account is verified and includes various iconography that’s associated with conspiracy theories. John F. Kennedy Jr. appears as the profile picture. QAnon followers falsely claim that John F. Kennedy Jr. faked himself dead and will run as vice president alongside Donald Trump in 2020.
CBKNews tweeted a support for QAnon shortly after posting the picture.
Watch #ElonMusk over the next 60 Days. Q. Big”, the account tweeted.
CBKNews didn’t respond to a Twitter request for comments and deleted the Pentagon blast tweet later. John Scott-Railton is a senior researcher with the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto. Tweeted that the image displayed signs of being generated by artificial intelligence.
The image had a life before it was removed.
RT, the official Russian propaganda outlet, tweets at 10:03 a.m. ET about “reports a bombing near the Pentagon.”
The account of a business news aggregation Twitter influencer, who has over 650,000 Twitter followers and is known for posting Bloomberg News articles, posted a tweet at 10:06 am about a large explosion near the Pentagon Complex. The tweet was later deleted after it had received hundreds of retweets.
The tweet spread quickly, which scared some investors. After the image was shared by accounts that were well-followed, the S&P 500 fell sharply. Later, it recovered these losses.
The anonymous Wall Street blog ZeroHedge, which has 1.6 million followers on its account, posted the fake Pentagon image shortly after the tweet with the caption, “EXPLOSION NEXT TO PENTAGON.” ZeroHedge deleted the tweet later.
Fake news organizations that purchased “verified check marks” on Twitter began spreading the hoax at this point. Minutes later, the account @BloombergFeed posted the conspiracy theory. This account is not affiliated with Bloomberg. Twitter has suspended that account.
Around 10:27 a.m. The Arlington, Virginia fire department tweeted “There is NO explosion or accident taking place at the Pentagon or nearby.”
Nick Waters, an investigative analyst at digital investigation firm Bellingcat told NBC News the panic surrounding the image “never had any sense”.
Waters stated that the picture had a number of red flags. When you try to place this image in space or geolocate, you cannot because it is not a real location. It’s not an authentic building in Washington.”
Waters noted also that the fences in the front of the fake buildings morphed and merged into one another.
A copycat hoaxer, after the fake Pentagon picture went viral on Monday morning, posted a similar photo of the White House in flames. Waters said that the photo didn’t go viral in the same way as the Pentagon picture, partly because it “didn’t look like the White House.”
Waters stated that “AI still isn’t great at producing accurate location, and you can tell that by the picture.”
