The micro-blogging platform is becoming increasingly popular and with services such as Twitter, the growth has been tremendous. It quickly became a trend and even celebrities – such as Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore – have created accounts to tweet about their everyday lives. Coyle (2009) states although it is limited to 140 characters, this has not prevented celebrities from revealing a new digital dimension of themselves. However, some believe that the recent surge of celebrities joining this micro-blogging website has also contributed to the growth of celebrity imposters (Schiretta 2009).
Thus, with celebrity imposters and hackers on the rise, followers may have a hard time figuring out whether their accounts are real or fake. When news about the Dalai Lama opening a Twitter account surfaced, many believed this. However, it was a fake account and even before Twitter could do something about it, the account had already gathered about 20,000 followers (Owens 2009). Hence, credibility and authenticity comes into question. This results in users now expressing skepticism whenever an alleged celebrity joins the site (Owens 2009). With that, many have voiced out about the need for some verification system for valid accounts. Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter, suggested that providing account verification would be a good way to enhance Twitter since fake accounts are problematic (Coyle 2009).
Twitter's Verified Account badge (source: bloggingtips.com)
Consequently, Twitter now has a Verified Accounts feature which incorporates a seal to show that the accounts have been verified as belonging to the person or organization named (Leyden 2009). This measure is taken to restore faith in the authenticity of celebrity profiles, explains Leyden (2009). With the implementation of this scheme, users can identify real accounts from the fake ones easily compared to before. However, currently this only applies to celebrities and high-profile organizations (Leyden 2009).
Ashton Kutcher's official Twitter account has the Verified Account badge.
(source: geeksugar.com)
Despite the new system to verify official accounts of celebrities, hackers still manage to hack into celebrity profiles and tweet using their accounts. This proves to be dangerous as newspapers and blogs have begun quoting people on twitter and thus, if nothing is done, it could get ugly (Schiretta 2009). Speaking of ugly situations, there has been a number of celebrities who have gotten their Twitter accounts hacked. According to Constatin (2009), the Twitter account of Disney star, Miley Cyrus, was hacked last year with tweets which read: “I’m not a f****** role model. I hate little kids. I only do Hannah Montana for da $$$$$$”. Several other obscene and offensive messages were posted on her account, with some attacking other stars such as Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato (Constantin 2009). Following the incident, her Twitter account was suspended temporarily by Twitter staff.
Miley Cyrus' Twitter account hacked with offensive tweets (source: allieiswired.com)
Hence, even with the verification seal format, the credibility of Twitter accounts cannot be guaranteed as imposters and hackers still manage to find their way to hack user accounts. Thus, this problem should be further addressed before it causes more harm to society.
References:
Constantin, L 2009, ‘Miley Cyrus’ twitter account hacked’, Softpedia, 18 February, viewed 13 November 2010, <http://news.softpedia.com/news/Miley-Cyrus-039-Twitter-Account-Hacked-104817.shtml>
Coyle, J 2009, ‘Stars (and some impostors) flood twitter’, Huffington Post, 3 March, viewed 13 November 2010, <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/03/stars-and-some-imposters-_n_171557.html>
Leyden, J 2009, ‘Twitter fights celeb imposters with verified account scheme’, The Register, 8 June, viewed 13 November 2010, <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/08/trusted_twitter/>
Owens, S 2009, ‘How celebrity imposters hurt twitter’s credibility’, Media Shift, 20 February, viewed 13 November 2010, <http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/02/how-celebrity-imposters-hurt-twitters-credibility051.html>
Schiretta, P 2009, ‘The growing problem of celebrity imposters on twitter’, Slash Film, 26 March, viewed 13 November 2010, <http://www.slashfilm.com/the-growing-problem-of-celebrity-imposters-on-twitter/>
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