- Oh Twitter. You've been wronged.
- When you moved to suspend several accounts satirizing Russia's ruling elite, the public outcry that followed saw you under attack for hampering free speech, following the authorities' bidding and generally showing poor judgement of how likely parody accounts called @SovietSergey or @DarthPutinKGB are to be mistaken for the real thing.
- But now, with the accounts reinstated and the digital dust slowly settling, a new picture emerges.
- One in which Twitter was nothing but a tool to help beleaguered voices of satire gain a wider following.
- Just look at @DarthPutinKGB: From early May, the account usually added a couple dozen new followers daily. But the publicity that comes with being blocked and unblocked saw it jump from 57,679 to almost 64,000 followers within a week. On a more modest scale, @SovietSergey went from around 500 to almost 2,000 followers.
- We see what you did there, Twitter — and we want to help. Here are a few more accounts we suggest you suspend asap to help them along.
- Clearly, this account is trying to impersonate Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. Just look at that Twitter icon! It looks exactly like a photo of Peskov … except it's a caricature with comically bulging eyes, ears that would work well as pot handles, and a moustache on the verge of detaching itself and starting a life of its own!
- Just think of all the misunderstandings this will invite — and suspend it now! Otherwise, followers will absolutely believe that Peskov just posted this cartoon, titled "Night in Russia."
2. @Fake_MIDRF
- "Good morning, great and beautiful Russia!"
- It's tweets like this one that will have gullible Twitter users (so pretty much all of them) believe this is the actual Russian Foreign Ministry. Granted, they use the word "parody" in their Twitter bio. But then again, so did @DarthPutinKGB — and see what that got him!
3. @Sputnik_Not
- We'd imagine whoever runs this Twitter account was a bit miffed not to be included in this week's round of suspensions.
- After all, it was trying just as hard: regularly mocking Putin, adding funny captions to serious photographs, generally undermining Kremlin spin, all while using a name that just begs to be mistaken for the real thing.
- So why hasn't it been suspended yet? Only Twitter knows.
- Bet you had to read that one twice, huh? With this account, any hints that it may not be an official Kremlin channel are incredibly well hidden. Okay, "Kremlin," "president" and "Russia" are all misspelled. Okay, it recently followed up on Medvedev's "There's no money" gaffe by suggesting this "no money" bank note.
- But hey, we all know making typos is as easy as walking into a shop and buying a Russian military outfit.
- Maybe Twitter has been holding off on this account because, at 1.6 million followers, it doesn't really need the boost that a suspension provides?
5. @ThanksAbama



