Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Data Scientist/Musician/Participant in the General Confusion @trutherbotprop Resist autocracy and research/counter disinformation. I serve the realm.

Feb 6, 2021, 8 tweets

What do these eighteen blue-check accounts have in common (other than the profile graphics)? Answer: they're all old accounts that were recently renamed and redecorated, giving the appearance that they are official Baja California Sur government accounts.

cc: @ZellaQuixote

Some examples, accompanied by screenshots of each account's former appearance courtesy of Internet archive:

@Servicios122 (ID 49774815) was formerly @jess_noons
@prod121 (ID 142177657) was formerly @AmyOguntala
@secfin12 (ID 349157648) was formerly @lewaron

Here are the 18 renamed verified accounts that are currently presenting themselves as affiliated with the government of Baja California Sur, Mexico. Most appear to have originally belonged to random US residents, and it is unclear at what point they gained their blue checkmarks.

In most cases, these accounts deleted all their old tweets as part of the makeover. Some were not as thorough about it as others, such as @FMAR122 which still has tweets from 2015 advertising it as "YOUR #1 POLE PARTY HEADQUARTERS". #YouHadOneJob

Each of these 18 accounts is followed by at least some of the others. Notably, none is followed by the official accounts of the Baja California Sur government or its governor (@GobRCS and @cmendozadavis, the only verified Twitter accounts linked from the BCS government website).

What do these accounts tweet subsequent to their (possibly illicit) makeovers? So far, not much - they mostly retweet real Mexican government and media accounts, and link the sites they claim affiliation with on their profiles.

* tag is wrong, should be @GobBCS.

More here:

Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.

A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.

Keep scrolling