Well, the coronavirus, aka COVID-19 is officially a pandemic, per the World Health Organization on Wednesday. But at least we can share some good news regarding the virus — Harry Potter doesn’t have it, despite what you may have heard on Twitter.
You may have seen a story going viral on Tuesday claiming Daniel Radcliffe had become the first celebrity to test positive for the virus.
That story’s origin was a tweet from the account @BBCNewsTonight, which uses the handle BBC Breaking News, complete with the real BBC logo and certainly looks like an offshoot of the British news organization — but has no affiliation with the actual BBC.
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No, the entire account, which has since been suspended by Twitter, appears to have been fraudulent from the start (the dead giveaway being that it apparently had only about 125 followers).
The tweet is now gone, but there are countless screen grabs still out there; it read:
“BREAKING: Daniel Radcliffe tests positive for coronavirus. The actor is said to be the first famous person to be publicly confirmed.”
The message then provided a link to a site also using the real BBC News logo:

In fact, near as we can tell there was a real link to the BBC’s website, bbc.co.uk, there just wasn’t an article — they were relying on the fact no one ever actually clicks the links and reads the articles, just skims the headlines and shares.
And that is exactly what happened. Many people, including two with large followings who amplified the story. New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman and Politico editorial director Blake Hounshell both shared the tweet to their followers, lending it far too much legitimacy. Haberman later deleted the verbiage from her own timeline and apologized, tweeting:
“Earlier today, I RTed a fake BBC account and un-RTed when a very helpful reader flagged it. My apologies for confusion.”
Hounshell also apologized.
See, people, this is an actual example of “fake news” — a hoax made by people posing as journalists (and unfortunately shared by real journalists who didn’t do their due diligence). Speaking of real journalism, Buzzfeed News actually managed to track down people who claimed responsibility for the hoax! The 33 members of the group behind it showed evidence in the form of Twitter stats — according to their data, the tweet had over 311,000 impressions and 69,000 engagements. The tricksters said they’ve been spreading Internet hoaxes since 2016 and that they thought it was funny.
They also explained to the outlet they chose Radcliffe because he’s a beloved child star but isn’t “popular on social media” — presumably meaning he wouldn’t be able to quickly debunk the spreading lie? One told Buzzfeed:
“We needed someone who was famous but not famous enough to be unbelievable.”
They mentioned David Hasselhoff, Pamela Anderson, and Megan Fox as other potential targets, celebs who “are famous but people will only care about them if something huge happens.” Man, that is disturbing. BTW, DanRad’s publicist did officially say the story was “not true” when reached for comment by the outlet. But if no one is clicking on the stories, just the headlines… how many people will continue to believe it??
Yeesh. Be careful out there, y’all!
[Image via NBC/Michael Wright/WENN.]
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