Pro-Trump Twitter account removed for posing as Black man shot and killed by BCSO deputies
Twitter has removed dozens of fake accounts claiming to be Black voters in support of President Donald Trump, including one account that posed as a deceased San Antonio man.
According to reports, the social media company took down almost two dozen accounts pretending to be Black police officers, veterans, businessmen and more. One account, which went by the handle @MAGAJavale, was flagged after people noticed the profile photo was of Damian Daniels, the man killed by Bexar County deputies in August.
Daniels, the 30-year-old former Army sergeant, was suffering from a mental health crisis at his home on the Far West Side on Aug. 25 when deputies fatally shot him. The shooting is still under investigation.
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A Twitter user took a screenshot of the account before it was suspended. The tweets from the account said Daniels was a Black cop who believed the only path to success was with Trump. The account had more than 16,000 followers when it was suspended.
Many of the fake accounts were discovered and reported by Clemson University social media researcher Darren Linvill after he noticed similar accounts using identical language that were racking up hundreds of thousands of retweets and mentions, the Washington Post reported.
Twitter has been removing similar fake accounts with pro-Trump propaganda over the last few months. Those setting up the fake account take photos of black men from news articles or stock photos and use them as a guise for Black support for the president.
In August, fake accounts claiming to be Black voters were tweeting about an exodus from the Democratic Party because the Black Lives Matter movement pushed them toward Republican values, NBC News reported. Those accounts, like @MAGAJavale, generated thousands of retweets and likes before they were taken down.
On Express-News: Deputy who killed Damian Daniels had troubled past
A spokesman with Twitter has told media outlets that the site removed the accounts for violating rules against platform manipulation and spam.
Some experts believe the accounts may be financially motivated rather than political. Sam Riddell, a researcher at the California-based cyber-security firm FireEye said the accounts are able to quickly build a following, which in turn is used to promote pro-Trump merchandise.
“After they built a substantial following, they would periodically promote links to pro-Trump t-shirts for sale, urging followers to quickly purchase the merchandise before promptly deleting the promotional tweets…The accounts would then resume their political activity after wiping all traces of a potential financial motivation, leaving the persona intact,” Riddell tweeted.
Taylor Pettaway is a breaking news and general assignment reporter for MySA.com | [email protected] | @TaylorPettaway
