Late last night, I took a look at the MLBSportsReport Twitter account, and how it was just a ridiculous, poorly executed fake account. Welp, I kept looking att things falling down the rabbit hole, and I've discovered an absolute treasure trove of fake accounts.
But before we start, how about a copied and pasted tweet with no RT or credit given? Sure!
So that's pretty cool, Now anyway, where the rabbit hole begins. A follower of mine tweeted what he thought was the official account of Atlanta sports talk station 680 The Fan, and told him about the situation. I got into a conversation with this account, and something…didn't feel right. Sure enough, this account (@680TheFan) wasn't the station's real account (which was @680_The_Fan). Just to confirm, I looked at his tweet history, and found this to confirm my suspicions.
Yeah. An official account firing employees on Twitter? Not likely. Of course, the account was following (and retweeting) MLBSportsReport.
Then, I kept digging…and kept finding similarities. In addition to our old buddy @FloridianFalcon, I found an interesting name in the followers list of the fake 680…@Andre_Ethier? As its second follower? OK then. Of course, the fake Ethier is retweeting MLBSportsReport…and following the account. Going through the fake Ethier's follows and sifting through the blue checkmarks, what do I see but…a Bad Luck Brian account? Yeah, another one, this one with the handle @ItsBadLuckBrian. That account is following (of course) MLBSportsReport.
Instead of continuing down the path of going from account to account, I started picking up on some similar names, including many fake ballplayers. We have a fake Will Middlebrooks, a fake Curt Schilling, and one of those "real player" humor accounts called @BallPlayersShit. Predictably, all of those accounts are retweeing and following MLBSportsReport, along with following each other. There's also @LeBronMemes in the mix.
Now, despite all this, we don't really have a concrete answer as to who the mastermind behind everything is. All I've got right now is that this little Twitter "empire" is about ten accounts large…as of right now. And the sad thing is, I'm really not seeing a point to it all. None of these accounts have high follower accounts (in contrast to the Sarah Phillips situation), and there aren't even any sponsored tweets popping out. It's just…bizarre.
Time to get the staff of Twitter on things and see if we can get some IPs matched.
UPDATE: I just had a discussion with our good friend FloridianFalcon. I think he's clean. According to him, MLBSportsReport came up on his recommended followers list, and he followed. Of course, one of the many RT contests ensued, and he "won" before getting screwed over in the process. So Twitter, lay off of the guy unless we find something concrete.
