FAKE NEWS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump on Saturday [8-5-17] appears to have unwittingly retweeted a Twitter user who built a public profile using a network of fake identities and stolen photos to hawk pro-Trump merchandise…
The Twitter account linked to the website ProTrump45, which sells pro-Trump T-shirts, hoodies, and hats, and hosts a pro-Trump blog. The site also offers businesses an opportunity to advertise on the site, and sells sponsored blog posts, tweets and emails…
Following Trump’s retweet Saturday, people on social media began to question whether @Protrump45 was a bot, and identified the user’s profile photo as that of a model whose picture appeared on Placeit, a site that sells mockups of tech and products such as T-shirts with users’ custom logos and designs…
By Sunday evening, Twitter had suspended @Protrump45 and other associated accounts.
And in a series of tweets, PlaceIt said the company believes that the Twitter accounts that promoted @Protrump45 and used images of Placeit models were associated with a single person or group.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Placeit founder and CEO Navid Safabakhsh said that when he learned someone was using Placeit images to create fake personas and promote Trump merchandise, he thought he might be dealing with professional online scammers, possibly from outside the United States.
A little digging turned up just four or five accounts using stock image photos that promoted each other and ProTrump45.com merchandise, he said… In the meantime, Trump’s retweet of @Protrump45 remains up on the president’s feed. The White House declined to comment.“
-Claudia Koerner and Craig Silverman, “How A Pro-Trump Twitter Scheme Fell Apart After A Retweet From The President,” Buzzfeed News, Aug. 7, 2017 07:45 pm