Twitter is rife with bots and trolls, which is why the platform offers verified accounts to celebrity users. But now spammers are posing as journalists, no matter how many followers they have, and lifting their name, background info and avatar to make it seem more authentic.
LearnVest's Allison Kade has 500 followers and a bot account, as does BuzzFeed's politics reporter Andrew Kaczynski, whose followers number over 70,000.
Last week, Gawker writer Cord Jefferson was the first to spot his doppleganger and tweet, “Ha ha. What is this? Why is this? How do I kill this thing?” Twenty minutes later, Kaczynski noticed the same thing and tweeted, “Fuck is this account?”
The bots haven't spoken and neither has Twitter, but BetaBeat's Jessica Roy, who broke the story has promised to stay on top of it.
[via BetaBeat]
LIKE COMPLEX TECH ON FACEBOOK
