247Sports Screencap
Rivals.com, 247 Sports and other recruiting websites have the impossible task of tracking every high school football recruit in the country and providing a ranking for that player.
Unfortunately for Rivals.com their algorithm was exploited by Internet trolls who created a fake recruit that got ranked by their system despite the player not existing in real life.
https://twitter.com/BrittnJackson/status/1094474595212636161
The fake recruit somehow made it to the top 10 players to watch on Prep Xtra.
Who are the top 10 recruits to watch for the class of 2020? @TuckerBryn @CooperMays @Tylerbaron23 @elijahyoung52 @DrewFrancis1015 @carringer2020 @TdotH44 @AjDavis1321 @chancellorbri @edwardstyrece13 https://t.co/dJpc74h6NO
— PrepXtra (@prepxtra) February 7, 2019
24/7 founder Shannon Terry took to Twitter to blast Rivals for falling for the fake recruit troll.
Recruiting PSA 1 of 2: Yday a national recruiting service rated a prospect that doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, that service’s public data contributes to the 247 Composite. While appalling, I am not surprised. (continued …)
— Shannon Terry (@ShannonTerry) February 14, 2019
Continued … Ironically, it was same lil brother service that took shots at 247 on NSD. In order to insure that never occurs again neg impacting the Composite, 247 has a new protocol where prospects are no longer given a Composite rating w/o also having a 247Sports rating.
— Shannon Terry (@ShannonTerry) February 14, 2019
Hopefully Rivals tweaked their algorithm to weed out for fakes.