There is no doubt that when we tweet something, it reaches to almost every user of that particular social media and some of them also retweet it to let others know about what is happening around the world. A few days ago such an innocuous tweet started making news that NASA is developing its own cryptocurrency. But is that really happening?
If you did not miss any announcement made by the American space agency NASA, it soon turned out that they are not making a cryptocurrency. William Turton, who works for Bloomberg, made an interesting announcement on Twitter that turned into something really different.
His tweet says, "Anne Neuberger, Director of NSA's new Cybersecurity Directorate says that the agency will propose hardware and software standards again. Also notes agency is working to build quantum resistant crypto."
So, first let's make things clear here, "crypto" means "cryptography" not "cryptocurrency."
Turton made his tweet off the back of an announcement by Neuberger at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit in Washington DC. But the problem started when other reporters and bloggers got the wrong idea of the whole Tweet and a series of this year's best fake news started to appear on several online platforms.
The meaning of the tweet was completely changed by many bloggers who then started to share the shocking news that NASA is making its own cryptocurrency.
The tweet mentioned NSA, which is the National Security Agency, not NASA, the US space agency. Here, it should be mentioned that NSA had earlier conducted their encryption-related research and development programs.
But the blaze of fake news became so high that one of the most reliable platforms, Forbes also made the same error and posted the news, entitled with "NASA To Develop A Quantum Resistant Cryptocurrency." It was Forbes contributor Naeem Aslam, who also misread the tweet and wrote an entire blog about the subject. However, after noticing the error, Forbes deleted Aslam's blog without any explanation.
Obviously it was not merely Forbes that fell victim for fake news but there are many online platforms which made the same error and ran the false news, such as Cointelegraph, Alles Over Crypto, Switzerland's the Cryptonomist and Finance Magnates.
