Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of the California-based start-up , called out Twitter for not taking (more) action against scam accounts – some of which are verified.
“I can’t believe I’m still doing this,” the CEO tweeted, directing his message to Twitter’s support account.
Per his tweet, Twitter has numerous verified accounts that have been impersonating Garlinghouse and even replying to crypto-related tweets.
The email the CEO shared shows the Twitter Support team allegedly saying that a reported account is not in violation of the social media giant’s misleading and deceptive identities policy.
Garlinghouse claimed
“It’s been years of scammy reply guys on this bird app, and we’re still waiting on any sort of action, while thousands (if not more) are taken advantage of.”
There is also a question of if, and if so, how bots are connected to this issue.
At the time of writing, there seems to have been only one verified Twitter account, belonging to the real CEO, followed by a number of accounts with variations on the same name.
Other users, however, claimed to have taken screenshots of certain accounts that do indeed have the check mark, along with the CEO’s name and picture – though the handles are noticeably different.
Many other commenters have claimed to have seen numerous users impersonating Garlinghouse, with some arguing that verifying an account is actually easy – while some suggested that it’s possible that these scammers are buying verified accounts.
There are a lot scammers using @bgarlinghouse name and photo, it apparently quite simple, after having a verified account, they just need to change photo and name in the profile. Here they go.. @Twitter
— Marcos Gomez Yepez (@MarcosYep1) October 3, 2022
Meanwhile, this is far from the CEO’s only battle with social media support teams and impersonators on these sites – rather, it seems to be a continuous fight.
Back in 2020, for example, the blockchain company announced a lawsuit against the video-sharing giant YouTube
"Today, we are taking legal action against YouTube to prompt an industry wide-behavior change and set the expectation of accountability," the company said at the time, adding that "YouTube and other big technology and social media platforms must be held accountable for not implementing sufficient processes for fighting [scams]."
This wasn’t the beginning either, as the company had complained and warned about Ripple- and - related scams, as well as impersonating the company’s executives for years before that.
Garlinghouse is not the only one targeted by these scam accounts either. Other well-known individuals include co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.
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