How Porn Performers Fall Victim to Twitter Impersonators
Adult entertainment workers count on social media to connect with fans, but the platform’s opaque rules leave them vulnerable to impersonators
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A few weeks ago, a porn performer friend of mine tweeted out a seemingly simple request. Someone had created a Twitter account impersonating her, one that not merely used her name and image, but copied her bio verbatim, creating a page that could easily be mistaken for the real thing at first glance. She wanted her friends and followers to report it.
Eager to assist her, I made my way to the offending account’s page, clicked the button to start the reporting process, and, as I got to the final page, noticed something odd. When prompted by the system to note who was being impersonated, I couldn’t fill in my friend’s account as the genuine article. As I began to type in her handle, she did not appear in Twitter’s list of suggestions. Even typing in her full username resulted in an error that informed me that my friend’s Twitter account — the very same one that had just tweeted out the request I was fulfilling — did not exist. I could report the account, but without the ability to vouch for my friend as the genuine article, the utility of the report was limited.
“I have had fans come up to me at conventions wanting to know why I did not show up for a date they set up.”
The glitch I noticed while trying to report my friend’s impersonator is one that is widely known to sex workers on Twitter. Commonly referred to as “shadow banning,” the act of delisting accounts from search can have serious effects for Twitter users. (You can find out more about shadow banning from my OneZero colleague Will Oremus’ stories on it here and here.)
It’s not merely that it makes it harder for fans to find their account; in many cases, erasing a real account from search gives added legitimacy to impostor accounts, which show up in place of the actual account when someone types in a person’s name. (When reached for comment about the original reporting issue that drew my attention, a Twitter representative informed me that the team was “aware of this…
