[jacquesm]

I've noticed that this is happening on any divisive subject, no matter what. Abortion, LGBTI rights, politics, sports, it doesn't matter there is always a bunch real people involved backed by an army of bots.

There are some people mapping this out manually, I'm surprised that the likes of Twitter don't take a harder stand against this because it likely is going to ruin the platform long term (if that hasn't already happened).

One example:

https://twitter.com/galactic_potato/status/14352650994770002...

[acdha]

My assumption is that Twitter is in a situation similar to Facebook's fraudulent pivot-to-video: they know there's a big problem but as soon as they do anything about it they're going to have to explain why the numbers they reported to investors, advertisers, etc. dropped noticeably.

Unless there's imminent legal action or people stop using the service, it's easier just to delay and hope that the horse learns how to sing…

[jimkleiber]

I have been thinking similar things since 2016. Apparently, Twitter created the verified profiles as a response to Tony La Russa suing them over impersonation accounts [0].

Oh, and I like the opening summary of the 2009 article:

> On the company blog, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says Tony La Russa lawsuit over fake tweets borders on "frivolous," but details plans to prevent such abuse of the service in the future.

[0]: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/twitter-to-r...

[Applejinx]

It's already happened.

Hard to say how many people recognize that, but it's long since happened.