After popular YouTuber @shoe0nhead launched a newsletter called “USE CAUTION WHEN ENGAGING WITH THIS USER,” with a small FBI seal next to it, she was fact-checked by CNN and Axios.
After popular YouTuber @shoe0nhead launched a newsletter called "USE CAUTION WHEN ENGAGING WITH THIS USER," with a small FBI seal next to it, she was fact-checked by CNN's Daniel Dale along with Axios' Lachlan Markay.
Shoe reported that she'd been "fact checked" by Dale, who later deleted the tweet.
sorry guys, ive been ‘fact checked’ ? pic.twitter.com/JxVJj0hSwt
— shoe (@shoe0nhead)
It read: "A YouTuber with more than 480K Twitter followers tricked a bunch of people into thinking the FBI was targeting her. How? She named her newsletter 'USE CAUTION WHEN ENGAGING WITH THIS USER' and used the FBI seal or something like it as a newsletter image." But it was Dale, primarily, who was tricked.
Shoe, who in her profile photo wears an FBI windbreaker, told The Post Millennial that she "named a fake throwaway newsletter to make it look like an FBI warning and attached it to my account. Then a CNN reporter and a journalist from Axios got mad and 'fact checked' my joke."
CNN’s self-credentialed fact checker @ddale8 did a “fact check” on a joke by @shoe0nhead. pic.twitter.com/OferbpTC4O
— Andy Ngô ???? (@MrAndyNgo)
Axios' Markay said that Shoe was "underhanded." "Just a remarkably underhanded way to gin up paranoia clicks," he wrote. "This is not an FBI notification, it's the name and header of this person's newsletter."
Of course, that fact is remarkably clear. What Shoe posted on her page is a newsletter sign-up, and the word "subscribe" is big and bold right beneath the comical name of the newsletter.
"Many people thought it was real and some called me a Russian agent lol," Shoe joked to The Post Millennial. "I don’t blame anyone for thinking it's real with the direction social media is heading."
Dale, who has fact checked The Post Millennial when the outlet joked that President Biden appeared to be sleeping during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett during which Biden appeared to be sleeping, admitted that he would be fact-checking Donald Trump in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election more than he would be Biden.
Dale wrote "Look, there's just no equivalence. Biden makes some false and misleading claims. It's important to note them. We will. But his assertions of fact have been largely factual. Trump, as we saw at the town hall and see again tonight, has been incessantly and egregiously dishonest."
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