Even blue ticks on Twitter part of pushing political agenda: Reports
May 24, 2022
New Delhi [India], May 24 : In a bid to promote political agendas and spread communal hatred, several imposters on Twitter change their usernames and information, reports have found, which also claimed that not only unverified accounts but several verified accounts are also part of this online scam.
"There are many agenda-driven accounts on social media platforms. These accounts provide manipulated information to fulfil their narratives. Such users buy social media accounts with huge followings and change their profiles, either with a motive to propagate an agenda or for their personal use," DFRAC, a research and analytics agency, reported.
With the technology and increasing consumption of social media among youngsters, it is believed that most of the information on social media is true. But the reality is far more different than it seems to be.
According to the DFRAC report, a Twitter account named @PTI_ki_cheeti was renamed @mms_isb. The account has 212.2K followers. Earlier it displayed a picture of a female which has been replaced by the picture of a man identified as Muhammad Shafique. The account had tweeted a lot in support of the former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and his party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
The report cited another example of an account @sultan_kgn, which was previously @Mahii_writes. Earlier, the user posted personal thoughts and posts related to poetry. Now after changing the identity, the account tweets in support of Owaisi. The account changed its name from Mahii to Dr. Mahira who claimed to be a doctor from Mumbai.
Not only unverified accounts but several verified accounts are also a part of this. An account with the username @skiingmegan is a verified account having about 43.5K followers. The account describes itself as Blockchain News, media, PR, Marketing, and Advertisement network in its Twitter Bio and majorly posts things related to cryptocurrency and Blockchain.
From the archived tweets, it was found that the previous narrative of this account majorly included the techniques to gain as many followers as it can. It has tweeted many posts requesting people to follow the account. Like in of the Tweets, the account wrote, "There are 17 left to have 10k followers, follow fast, will give follow back," added the agency.
But the major setback with these accounts is that any user can change the username as many times as he like. But the User ID is something that is unique to every account and it can't be changed.
The user might change the entire information in the account including the username, bio, and even the location but the UserID remains the same. And the user can get caught through it.
