Twitter impersonation cases are out of control

Posted by eramirem on Sunday April 21, 2013 @07:57AM
from the self-post dept.

The Twitter Rules say: "Impersonation: You may not impersonate others through the Twitter service in a manner that does or is intended to mislead, confuse, or deceive others". I have detected an account (very likely to be a bot) that is posting exactly the same tweets I post, with 5-minutes delay; including mentions and pictures, which mislead people who is being mentioned. That is clearly an impersonation case, but Twitter says that they don't mediate user content UNLESS it violates the Twitter Rules.

Doesn't a bot that replicate your tweets violate the Twitter Rules? Is being Twitter negligent?

( 8 comments | 4 points | on HN )

Re:Twitter impersonation cases are out of control by eramirem on Monday April 22, 2013 @07:57AM (#5588868)

The answer from Twitter Support, they just focused on the bot account profile picture.

"Hello,

Thanks for providing this information. As a policy, we do not mediate user content, including images, unless it violates the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules). Based on this policy, we will not remove the reported image."

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Re:Twitter impersonation cases are out of control by juandg on Sunday April 21, 2013 @09:51AM (#5584814)

Have you tried reporting impersonation? You can do that here: https://support.twitter.com/forms/impersonation

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Re:Twitter impersonation cases are out of control by eramirem on Sunday April 21, 2013 @10:46AM (#5585000)

I have reported the issue twice, but Twitter said that since I don't have copyright on the profile picture, they do nothing.

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Re:Twitter impersonation cases are out of control by juandg on Monday April 22, 2013 @09:17AM (#5589107)

But it's not just the profile picture, it's replicating your tweets too, right? That's got to count for something.

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Re:Twitter impersonation cases are out of control by eramirem on Tuesday April 23, 2013 @02:27PM (#5596997)

yeap, still no solution from Twitter Support. That's frustrating.

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Re:Twitter impersonation cases are out of control by billyto on Sunday April 21, 2013 @08:15AM (#5584616)

Seems like an script is using your account to grow something that looks like a valid user, then they will start spamming. Sadly, twitter doesn't care about non-famous users.

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Re:Twitter impersonation cases are out of control by juandg on Sunday April 21, 2013 @09:54AM (#5584820)

Pretty scary this new trend. They could create a replication bot and get seemingly original content avoiding deletion for spam from twitter, but still being able to inject spam in some of the tweets.

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Re:Twitter impersonation cases are out of control by arkitaip on Sunday April 21, 2013 @08:07AM (#5584604)

I suspect that Twitter's response would be very different if you had a - EXPENSIVE - verified account.

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