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Journalism of Courage
Remember a screenshot of the tweet widely shared last year where Elon Musk said he would buy Snapchat and delete all the filters?
A similar incident happened during the Covid-19 pandemic. A screenshot of a tweet, attributed to Bill Gates, was widely shared. It was claimed Gates said, “Vaccines in our food supply solves the problem of vaccine hesitancy.”
Both these screenshots were found to be fake and these celebrities did not say the things which were widely circulated and attributed to them. These statements were in the form of ‘tweets’ and it was easy to believe those since they appeared to come from genuine, verified accounts.
But do you know it is very easy to generate fake tweets?
Certain fake tweet generators, like tweetgen.com or Fake Tweet Generator, can easily generate a ‘tweet’. The user just has to upload a few essential details, such as name, username, content of the tweet or message, time and date, ‘twitter for iPhone, Android or Twitter web’.
User can also input retweet counts, quote tweets, likes count and theme, which is light, dim or dark and a verification badge. The right side of the section then shows the preview of the tweet and people can circulate it in the form of an image after downloading it. These applications are available on the internet for free.
It is then, that Twitter Advanced Search comes to the rescue.
Twitter Advanced Search is an inbuilt tab in the Twitter search option. You can also find it on the right corner of the Twitter homepage once you search for a keyword.
Twitter Advanced Search is a tool that allows users to refine their searches on the platform to find specific tweets, conversations, and trends. This tool can easily be used to find out whether a certain person tweeted about something during a particular time period or not.
You can type the exact same words from the screenshot circulated in the search section, from the tweet. The advanced search also has an option to exclude certain words and search using hashtags or even language.
The user can also check from which account the tweet was made, if replied to certain accounts or even check if they have mentioned someone.
Advanced search also allows people to apply filter for replies and links. If you wish to verify a tweet using engagements, which is possible through the advanced search too.
Users can also select a custom range for dates.
This Twitter tool helps people enhance their Twitter experience and stay well-informed. Let us understand how Twitter Advanced Search works by debunking the tweet that was widely shared, claiming to be a tweet by Elon Musk.
The tweet says, “Next I’m buying Snapchat and deleting all the filters. Welcome back to reality ladies.”
The tweet was attributed to “@elonmusk”.
We inserted all the necessary details in the Twitter Advanced Search and this was the result:
We did the same for the tweet attributed to Bill Gates, the tweet said, “Vaccines in our food supply solves the problem of vaccine hesitancy.” We ran a Twitter Advanced Search on the same and here’s what we got:
Searching for tweets by people is very easy with Twitter Advanced Search and one does not necessarily has to scroll the entire Twitter profile of the person to whom the tweet is attributed; this is a major tool that helps verify the statements by Twitter users.
