On July 1, the financial world was briefly ablaze with a news release from “thecryptoalert.com” about the resignation of SEC Chairman Gary Gensler. According to an “anonymous official”, the chairman would have submitted his resignation to the United States financial regulator after an “internal investigation”.
Now it turns out that this is not true at all and Cointelegraph came up until the discovery that 96.8 percent of thecryptalert’s article is generated by artificial intelligence.
Check the source
This just goes to show that in this day and age you should always check your sources before acting on a news fact. Thecryptoalert was also a news platform on which a total of only 17 publications can be found, the first of which appeared on June 22, 2023.
Most of the articles on the platform are artificially generated and score an average of 70 percent on those tests. Furthermore, it is in the internet archive to find that thecryptoalert changed hands on June 24.
BREAKING:
Anonymous official at the SEC has reportedly disclosed that chairman Gary Gensler is going to resign following an internal investigation.
— whalechart (@WhaleChart) July 2, 2023
Despite all those red flags, a number of accounts on Twitter published the news without checking the source. This naturally results in a large group of people blindly adopting that news. After all, why wouldn’t you believe it when some major parties within the industry are doing it online?
SEC responds
Charles Gasperino, a reporter for Fox Business Network, thought the rumors were at least enough reason to investigate. He asked the SEC for clarification and was told that Gary Gensler has not submitted his resignation at all.
Breaking: As expected @SECGov PR says @GaryGensler is not resigning
— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) July 2, 2023
Somehow we could have expected that when it comes to an “anonymous source” within the SEC and a party like thecryptoalert, with 17 previous publications, has the scoop on this news.
This incident mainly shows how easy it is to distribute things on the internet nowadays. It sometimes seems as if people want these things to be true and therefore retweet and forward messages without thinking.
