An organized army on Twitter using popular names.
Impersonation is nothing new, hundreds of such accounts are active everywhere, Twitter, Facebook etc, but many have different reasons. It’s actually quite easy, just use a word “Parody” somewhere in corner and impersonate any celebrity, journalist, gain thousands of followers, earn money, spread your agenda.
While Twitter verify real handles but then who cares if the tweets match their bias and likes ? Why not take it further, take screenshots and share on WhatsApp cause it’s a platform who just sees the photo and content, they don’t even know about twitter, leave verification apart.
A clever strategy has come up to gain more followers, more retweets –
“बुद्धिजीवियों ने मेरा एकाउंट सस्पेंड करा दिया, वो क्या समझते है कि एकाउंट सस्पेंड कराके मेरी आवाज को दबा देंगे, मेरे सभी पुराने साथी मुझे मेरे इस एकाउंट पर फॉलो करने की कृपा करें जी Follow @AnyCelebritySoundingHandle सभी साथी इस ट्वीट को अधिक से अधिक Retweet करें… RT please,”
Loosely this translates to “Intellectuals got my account suspended, what do they think, they can suppress my voice ?, All my old friends, please follow my this account and also all retweet this tweet in large numbers”
Given this account with a celebrity/journalist name and his/her photo, many usually fall for it, thinking it to be true and follow the command.
On twitter having large number of followers have reasons, real verified celebrity handles as people/fans wants to know about them, journalists/anchors to interact with them, or any popular figure. Also many get huge number of followers because of their humor, talent etc.
But how are these fake handles have thousands of followers ? Cause they are organized, having same agenda, political, religious.
And the clue here is that almost all of these accounts are retweeting each other, asking people to follow each other and above all very active and fast.
While Steve Jobs added “i” to Phone, these ids added ‘i’ to the celebrities names 🙂
Few of the Fakes under celebs’ name –
Impersonation of Journalist Sweta Singh – https://twitter.com/iSwetaSinghAT
Impersonation of Paresh Rawal, Actor and BJP MP – https://twitter.com/ThePareshRawal
Impersonation of Rohit Sardana, Journalist – https://twitter.com/TheRohitSardana
Impersonation of Isha Ambani, Daughter of Mukesh Ambani – https://twitter.com/IIshaAmbani
Impersonation of Anjana Om Kashyap, Journalist – https://twitter.com/AnjanaOmKashyp
Impersonation of Bobby Deol, Actor – https://twitter.com/Bobeydeol1
Impersonation of Sanjay Mishra, Actor – https://twitter.com/i_SanjayMishra
Impersonation of MS Dhoni, Cricketer – https://twitter.com/the_surya
Impersonation of Virat Kohli, Cricketer – https://twitter.com/Im_virat_
Impersonation of Raju Shrivastava, Comedian – https://twitter.com/iRajuSrivastav
Impersonation of Nana Patekar, Actor – https://twitter.com/iNanaPatekar
Impersonation of Rohit Sharma, Cricketer – https://twitter.com/ISharmaRohit
Increasing followers –
बुद्धिजीवियों ने मेरा एकाउंट सस्पेंड करा दिया,
वो क्या समझते है कि एकाउंट सस्पेंड कराके मेरी आवाज को दबा देंगे,
मेरे सभी पुराने साथी मुझे मेरे इस एकाउंट पर फॉलो करने की कृपा करें
Follow करें 👉 @iRavish_Kumar
सभी साथी इस ट्वीट को अधिक से
अधिक Retweet 🔁 जरूर करें 🙏— Ravish Kumar (@iRavish_Kumar) December 22, 2017
बुद्धिजीवियों ने @iSharmaAnushka एकाउंट सस्पेंड करा दिया,
वो क्या समझते है कि एकाउंट सस्पेंड कराके उनकी आवाज को दबा देंगे,
उनके सभी पुराने साथी उन्हे इस एकाउंट पर फॉलो करने की कृपा करे 🙏
Follow 👉 @iSharmaAnushka
सभी साथी इस ट्वीट को अधिक से अधिक Retweet करें.. RT please,🙏
— Shilpa Shinde (@iShilpasShinde) December 30, 2017
बुद्धिजीवियों ने मेरा एकाउंट सस्पेंड करा दिया,
वो क्या समझते है कि एकाउंट सस्पेंड कराके मेरी आवाज को दबा देंगे,
मेरे सभी पुराने साथी मुझे मेरे इस एकाउंट पर फॉलो करने की कृपा करें जी 🙏
Follow 👉 @AnjanaOmKashyp
सभी साथी इस ट्वीट को अधिक से अधिक Retweet करें…Follow please,
— Akshay Sharma 👓 (@BeingAkshay420) December 30, 2017
Follow mee
— Sunny Deol ⛳⛳ (@SirSunnydeol5) January 1, 2018
One of the examples –
बुद्धिजीवियों ने मेरा एकाउंट सस्पेंड करा दिया,
वो क्या समझते है कि एकाउंट सस्पेंड कराके मेरी आवाज को दबा देंगे,
मेरे सभी पुराने साथी मुझे मेरे इस एकाउंट पर फॉलो करने की कृपा करें जी 🙏
Follow 👉 @iSwetaSinghAT
सभी साथी इस ट्वीट को अधिक से अधिक Retweet करें… RT please,
— Sweta Singh (@iSwetaSinghAT) December 30, 2017
This is the original account of Sweta Singh, Executive Editor, Programming, Aaj Tak which was never suspended at all.
Above all, the fake id is followed by verified people
Agenda –
Interesting stuff is, this handle has more than 5000 tweets/retweets just within a month, 48 thousand followers and all history deleted, no tweet before December 2017. Miracle ? Nope, it’s result of organized hard work. Scroll their timeline and you will find these all belongs to Right Wing agenda, same tweets, same issues.
Making Money –
In fact they also mint money using this strategy. With such large number of followers they can participate in paid/inorganic hashtag trending too. There are many Social influencing companies who outsource and pay to such twitter handle to trend a hashtag, usually such hashtags are for any move, any new product launch etc. For example following is for hashtag – #SportLooksGoodOnDelhi
✓फॉलो करो
फॉलो पाओ✓★जिनको मिल जाये वो रीट्वीट करें★
— Rohit Sardana (@TheSardanaRohit) January 2, 2018
Communal Hatred
एक काली कुतिया को सुवर के साथ सोने का और पिल्ले पैदा करने का फरमान क्या निकल आया सारे सिकुलर खुद को ऊँगली कर के अपनी वासना की संतुष्टी का आनंद प्राप्त कर रहे है.😂#Hadiya
— Nana Patekar (@iNanaPatekar) March 8, 2018
एक मौलवी के अनुसार जो मुस्लिम मर्द दाढ़ी नहीं रखता वो हिजड़ा होता है!
तो क्या सलमान खान, आमिर खान, इरफान खान, जावेद अख्तर ये सब हिजड़े हैं?
RETWEET=AGREE— Akshay Sharma 👓 (@BeingAkshay420) December 31, 2017
Twitter Policy for impersonation
Twitter although have a policy for reporting such impersonation account but there is a catch, or rather a loophole. Twitter allows the accounts with “Parody” or “fan” in the bio of the account.
“What happens when Twitter receives a valid report?
Upon receipt of an impersonation report, we will investigate the reported accounts to determine if the accounts are in violation of the Twitter Rules. Accounts determined to be in violation of our impersonation policy, or those not in compliance with our parody, commentary, and fan account policy, will either be suspended or asked to update the account(s) so they no longer violate our policies.”
Source – https://help.twitter.com/en/safety-and-security/report-twitter-impersonation
Loophole of Twitter Policy
Report impersonation accounts
“Impersonation is a violation of the Twitter Rules. Twitter accounts portraying another person in a confusing or deceptive manner may be permanently suspended under the Twitter impersonation policy.”
So what the following words in Twitter impersonation policy means –
Parody –
Fan – A handle which should be dedicated to the name it’s using, being fan tweeting about his ideal/hero
So did you find any of above meanings in the handles mentioned in this article ?
None it seems. So this is how such twitter accounts are being misused.
So suggest you always to keep a lookout on such handles, don’t believe in them just because they are twitting what you like, always look for truth, the facts.
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