A fake tweet that there had been an “explosion near the Pentagon complex,” was quickly discredited by local police and savvy social media users, but still gave the stock market jitters on Monday.
The image of a billowing black cloud near an official-looking, fenced-in building was tweeted by the Blue-check-verified @BloombergFeed account, which, along with several other accounts, has since been suspended.
The confusion about Monday’s hoax confirmed what critics of Twitter Blue — which requires only a monthly subscription fee to be “verified” on the Elon Musk-owned platform — had feared, with fake accounts being confused for legitimate news outlets or companies.