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Nigerian(s) for Pete
Did a Buttigieg campaign staffer impersonate a Nigerian online? No. But it wasn’t exactly crazy to think she did.
Being online in 2020 is like living out a shittier, more mundane version of Blade Runner. There’s the same pervasive suspicion that the people we’re interacting with aren’t real—bots, sockpuppets, paid shills, etc.—minus all the cool stuff, like the brooding minimalistic synth soundtrack and gritty dystopian aesthetic. We’re all transformed into Detective Deckards with our own variations on the Voight-Kampff test that we use tell real users from the “replicants.”
There are apps like the BotOMeter, which uses an algorithm to tell you if a Twitter user is exhibiting “bot-like” behavior. Another called Fake Followers Audit will let you know if an account is being propped up artificially. Then there are other tell-tale signs that don’t require a program to spot. A recently created account is a red flag. Weird syntax and broken English might signify that the user is from a sockpuppet operation in a foreign country.
Or maybe the post history shows that the account was dormant for several years, then it suddenly discovered politics and started posting every 5 minutes. Sometimes campaigns and marketers buy old accounts to avoid the appearance that they’re astroturfing.
