Of all social media networks, I reckon that twitter is the place where people go to get their news. In Zimbabwe to be more precise, it seems as if all the scoop on this ‘non-millitary takeover’ situation is on twitter. Because of that, there’s a high chance of dormant or even new twitter users to (re)surface.
However, it goes without saying that there is need to know which sources to trust. Fake news is real. Truth is it can be quite difficult to distinguish between what is fake and what is real. Nonetheless, not all hope is lost because there’s a number of things that we can do to not fall victim.
One of the basic things that can help one not fall prey is being able to distinguish between a fake account and a real one. I know for those who are always on twitter this might not be much of an issue because they have already established who and who not to follow so my main focus will be on our dormant or new twitter users.
So here is a list of things you can consider when verifying a twitter account.
1. Name doesn’t match with the url link
When the name on the profile does not match the URL link of the profile it means the account was automatically generated via software and not by a human. Such accounts are difficult to trust since they are not directly attached to a particular person. See when someone is tweeting as themselves, they have a burden of at least being a credible source. If not, then they can totally say anything and know they won’t be held accountable for it.
2. No image/use of stock images
Well, this can be difficult in that some people are just not to fond of taking pictures and all. This means they will likely not use an image. But if one has been a twitter user for long, they are likely to feel odd for not having an image. So if they are seriously not into taking photos, the next best thing is using stock images. Unfortunately, this move is mostly associated with fake accounts.
3. No twitter bio
Real twitter users are not too lazy to create a twitter biography. After all, twitter bios are so easy to make, it could just be a simple phrase, a sentence or a bunch of words to describe yourself or the use of that particular account. Therefore, seeing a bio-less twitter account is suspect. Even worse if it’s meant to an organisation or something. How do you create an organisational twitter account and not have a bio???
4. Follows an extreme number of people
I know the first thing you do when you create a twitter account is follow people but surely you cannot just follow 1k people at once; well not at once but you get that idea. It’s often automatically generated accounts that do that. And as I mentioned earlier, such accounts cannot be trusted.
5. No reply tweets
Well, the whole point of social media is for interaction right? If an account is ever churning out tweets but never responding to any tweets then that’s a red flag.