Fake Alonso Tweet, genuine Ferrari F-word Tweet
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So apparently Alonso has been involved in his own Twittergate. I didn’t see this myself, but the screenshot looks legit, and some news sites seem to be reporting on the tweet that went out and went missing.
As I said in the comments in the round-up I don’t believe this is real – at least, not yet:
Looks like a photoshop to me. Reading this on a laptop, I tilted by screen back, and noticed a fuzzy grey pixelated border around the main text of the tweet – most noticeable on the blank space two lines below the word “justicia” . This unusual feature is absent in the genuine tweets I’ve seen, like the ones in the daily round-up. I’m no expert, but having used and seen the results of image editing software before, especially when the images are reproduced in low quality, I would theorize that someone copied and pasted the inflammatory comment onto a Twitter post template with Alonso’s user information.
(Of course, the other possibility is that the tweet is genuine, and the visual artifacts are the result of low image resolution, in which case my hypothesis would be incorrect.)
The above notwithstanding, Alonso should be, and in all likelihood is, intimately familiar with the niceties of F1 politics. I don’t believe he could have been so brash as to post such a thing.
To be honest, I’d be surprised the only people who managed to make a screengrab are those who are only able to save it in such a low resolution. Isn’t there a way to check the hashtag he’s used or something?
I did a Twitter search using the hashtag, looking for manual retweets of this tweet (i.e. retweets sent as new tweets starting with RT). The presence of those would at least show the feasibility of such a tweet ever existing. I couldn’t find any, so I’m pretty sure this is fake.
For the none-Spanish speakers (including me), this is what Google Translate makes of it:
It is not as sweet as winning on the circuit, but justice has been done and I am F1 World Champion for the 3rd time. Thank you.
If Alonso did tweet this, then it simply doesn’t make any sense as it doesn’t comply with reality in any way. Also, why would Alonso congratualate himself? This must be a fraud.
This seals it for me – @leandra-graves reckons it’s fake:
@f1fanatic_co_uk @alo_oficial I receive mobile phone notifications for Alonso's tweets and never had such a message come through #fake
— Leandra Graves (@leandra23xx) November 30, 2012
Ferrari have however just dropped a clanger by Tweeting a link to a music video with the f-word in it. No screengrab yet but it’s clear from response on Twitter and search results someone sent it and then quickly deleted it:
http://twitter.com/InsideFerrari/statuses/275364000227811330
https://twitter.com/f1fanatic_co_uk/status/275365053203619841
Looks like someone over there meant to send that from a different account…
Yeah – I don’t see much foul in it. I’ve seen a lot of tweets where the press manager in charge of social media just forgets to switch accounts, and sends his personal tweets through a company account.
I can just imagine the sudden realisation and panic that must’ve went through whoever sent that. They weren’t the first and they won’t be the last to do that.
@magnificent-geoffrey Definitely not – I just read this the other day:
http://mashable.com/2012/11/25/social-media-business-disasters-2012/
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