About Screen Captured Tweets

People send me screen captured tweets all the time, and I really do love them. I posted one early this morning or last night from Tim Scott that I was able to verify. We managed to get it within minutes of it going up, before the tweet he was responding to was deleted. 

The only issue I have with the tweets that come in is that a good 95% of them can't be verified. And they are, obviously, very juicy. Most of them wouldn't warrant a deletion, either. But if I can't verify, I won't post them on our social media accounts unless the point was really good or really funny, at which point I try to point out the account was either verified fake or was not verifiable at all. There are several ways to spot a fake.

This is one I actually posted. But the account is fake. Steve's name is spelled wrong. This one is extremely common, and sometimes they aren't easy to spot right away. There was one a few months back credited to @MaxineVVaters. That was tough to catch. So was @ClintonChelsea. I have fallen for a few, it happens. But I correct it when it is discovered.

The other is really tough to spot, which is why I try to verify right off of people's Twitter feeds.

Did you know there are websites that allow you to create fake tweets that appear to come from someone else's account? It isn't just public figures, they can pull up anyone on Twitter. Here's an example:

It's verified. It appears to have been liked and tweeted a bunch of times. Everything is spelled right. It looks legit, but very juicy, since she put president in quotes. 

​You can actually go to sites like this and do this stuff. There are a bunch of them. 

I say this only because citing one of these fake tweets in a debate or conversation is going to cause you some serious grief. If you are going to use it to make a point or cite it later on, you need to know the information is not verifiable. It would be best not to use unverified tweets or other social media posts to make a point.