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Following Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter and the subsequent layoffs and policy changes that have followed, impersonator brand accounts have been on the rise. But it’s not a unique issue to the bluebird app. Twitter’s emerging challengers also host fake accounts posing as global brands.
As users consider life without Musk’s version of Twitter and move to find other micro-messaging platforms such as Mastodon and Hive Social, brands will likely follow.
The potential threat
While neither of these two emerging platforms, which both reached 2 million users in recent weeks, appear to be advertising destinations now, some major brands such as Adidas, Volkswagen and Red Bull appear to have already claimed domain names for potential future use.
Research conducted by Adweek found several fake accounts on Mastodon, too, discovering impersonations of brands such as Wendy’s, Coca-Cola, TikTok (since deleted) and the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile.
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