What’s In A Name?
So Trump, who has as much control when it come to talking as your average gag reflex, decided to name the whistleblower on his Twitter diary. He’s spilled it twice and soon erased it both times.
As dangerously goofy as that is, it’s nothing compared to how he got the name of the whistleblower. Both times he retweeted the name from an account held by @Surfermom77. That account shows all the signs of being a Twitter bot … uh, Russian disinformation. The account uses stock photos.
Surfermom77 has also tweeted far more than typical users, more than 170,000 times since the account was activated in 2013. Surfermom77 has posted, on average, 72 tweets a day, according to Nir Hauser, chief technology officer at VineSight, a technology firm that tracks online misinformation.
“That’s not something most humans are doing,” Hauser said.
While many bots only repost benign information like cat photos, others have been used to spread disinformation or polarizing claims, as Russian bots did in the lead up to the 2016 election.
In past years, Surfermom77 has described herself as a teacher, historian, documentary author and model.
I guess she forgot astronaut, notary public, and handsome race car driver.
I have an idea. Kick Trump off Twitter but give him a box of chalk and he can write on sidewalks when he has something to say.