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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Calls Out Elon Musk For Engaging With Twitter Parody Account & Warns Users To “Be Careful Of What You See”

Armando Tinoco
·2 min read

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is blasting Elon Musk after the Twitter owner interacted with a parody account impersonating the U.S. congressional representative.

“FYI there’s a fake account on here impersonating me and going viral. The Twitter CEO has engaged it, boosting visibility,” AOC tweeted. “It is releasing false policy statements and gaining spread.”

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Ocasio-Cortez said she was assessing with her team “how to move forward” and warned Twitter users to “be careful of what you see.”

Over the weekend, Musk replied with a fire emoji to an account parodying AOC on Twitter that tweeted, “This might be the wine talking, but I’ve got a crush on Elon Musk.”

The account is verified with a blue checkmark but that only means that the user is paying for Twitter Blue. The full name of the account is “Alexandria Ocasio-Corte Press Release (parody).” Although the account is clearly labeled parody, it’s not entirely visible for those viewing on a mobile device as the long name is truncated.

One can only see that it is labeled parody if you click on the user’s profile. Scrolling through the millions of tweets could confuse casual readers that it’s the actual AOC tweeting.

Government officials are distinguished on Twitter with a gray checkmark, which AOC currently has.

Twitter doesn’t allow impersonation of people but it allows parody accounts. The platform advises on their Help Center that “to avoid confusing others about an account’s affiliation, Parody, Commentary, and Fan accounts must distinguish themselves in their account name and in their bio.”

“Accounts that fail to sufficiently distinguish themselves are considered non-compliant and in violation of this policy.”

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