Perhaps you are familiar with “Redskins Facts,” a website and associated Twitter account providing information in support of Washington’s NFL team being named the “Redskins.” The site and account were founded in 2014, and are purportedly operated independently of the team itself. However, Sunday afternoon, the person in charge of the Twitter account slipped. Dan Steinberg of the Washington Post noticed that the team’s official account and Redskins Facts simultaneously sent out an identical tweet correcting a previous tweet by the official account.
Washington’s NFL team accidentally revealed it runs that ‘fan’ Twitter account supporting its name
Whatever was remaining of the jig is now officially up.
— Dan Steinberg (@dcsportsbog) December 13, 2015 The account's bio still claims that Redskins Facts is "a growing online community of passionate Washington Redskins fans," but the jig is now officially up. We now know that at least one person running the "fan" account is also a person running the team's real account.
There have been questions about the validity and independence of the account in the past. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog found the site was intentionally misleading. Slate found strong evidence that the website was made not by fans, but by a for-hire crisis management firm. The team’s official stance when the site launched was a statement strongly implying, but neither confirming nor denying, that it was independently operated. But it will be even harder to argue that going forward.
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