There are several things that influence what gets widely shared on Twitter. One is if the account that starts something is verified, and another is if one of the early retweets for an unverified account is from a verified account. Those ideas make some sense in general, but what they don’t check for is if the verified account is commenting on something within the scope of the expertise they were theoretically verified for in the first place. And that helps lead to situations like what we’ve seen over the past few days, with huge play for several accounts (both verified accounts in the first place and unverified accounts that were retweeted by verified people) that falsely claimed Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid (seen above in 2017) “had the most 40/10 games in a season in NBA history” or “set NBA record for 40/10 games in a season.” Here are some of those tweets:
-NBA scoring champ
-First center to average 30+PPG since 1982
-Most 40/10 games in a season in NBA history
…all while getting double & triple teamed.@JoelEmbiid pic.twitter.com/OnCmLrv1YW— Drew Hanlen (@DrewHanlen) April 10, 2022
Most 40/10 games (13) in a single season in NBA history….Not Wilt. Not Kareem. Not Shaq. Not Duncan, not Hakeem, not Barkley, not Giannis, not Jokic, not Westbrook….
— Matt (@Sixers_Matt) April 9, 2022
? 30.6 ppg – highest by any center in 40 yrs
? His line of 31/11/4 hasn't been done by anyone in 47 yrs
? First center to win a scoring title in 22 yrs
? Set NBA record for 40/10...
A front-page article with the byline of veteran New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof is the latest poisonous example of what I call the NGO “halo effect.” Headlined “The Silence That Mee...