Twitter Is The New Champion Of Free Speech

Prime example of the dangers in the pay-to-verify system: This account, which tweeted a (very likely AI-generated) photo of a (fake) story about an explosion at the Pentagon, looks at first glance like a legit Bloomberg news feed. pic.twitter.com/SThErCln0p

— Andy Campbell (@AndyBCampbell) May 22, 2023

Hey, it was caught, right?

A fake Bloomberg account with a Verified Blue Check on Twitter posted an apparently AI-generated picture of an explosion at the Pentagon this morning.

There was no explosion at the Pentagon, but the stock market still dipped.https://t.co/RCWKQwjgU1

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) May 22, 2023

And the fact that it got around Twitter like wildfire is TOTALLY not Twitter's fault!

Fake AI image of Pentagon 'explosion' briefly tumbles markets: report https://t.co/TYrq8w3RH6

— Raw Story (@RawStory) May 22, 2023

"The photo was spread by dozens of accounts, including RT, a Russian state-media Twitter account with over 3 million followers. But the post has since been deleted. Other accounts appear to be affiliated with conspiracy theories or the war in Ukraine."

The reporter adds, "Information about the purported explosion was shared by Twitter account @DeItaone at 10:06 a.m. local time."

NBC News reporter Ben Collins tweeted that a "fake Bloomberg account with a Verified Blue Check" was among the Twitter users who posted the "apparently AI-generated" image.

Twitter's totes not responsible for "fake Bloomberg," either.  After all, Elmo is a gene-yus!

And if you don't like that:

Would you like to watch a six-hour-long propganda film about how wonderful and badly misunderstood Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were? Well, you're in luck, because the whole thing is now available on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/IJg3xy38dN

— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) May 21, 2023

Hey, just alternative views, right? "Marketplace of ideas"? Amirite?