What happens when you create a poignant, popular Twitter parody
account? It’s a crapshoot, but sometimes this happens:
Twitter has
some rules about parody accounts. One is that the account name
should make clear that it’s not the real deal. The fact that this
one is “@WeKnowWhatsBest” seems
obvious enough. Another rule is that “the avatar should not be the
exact trademark or logo of the account subject,” but that wouldn’t
seem to include faces, as the fake press secretary account was
forced to change. And, plenty of parodies have real faces, like
this raunchy Bill
Clinton account.
The press secretary account has over 41,000 followers and,
thankfully, it’s back online jabbing the commander-in-chief and his
staff. Today it took a jab at President Barack Obama’s vacation
habits, and presumably, the new revelation that he isn’t going to
many of his intelligence briefings: “The White House intruder made
it all the way to the East Room, which technically means he spent
more time in the WH in Sept than Obama.”
There are
countless satirical accounts across the political and and
ideological spectrum, like this spot on “hip” parody of Vice
and the flawlessly bumbling @GOPTeens. Reason‘s
Robby Soave recently
highlighted @SalonDotCom, which got temporarily blocked,
presumably for being so convincing.
Twitter doesn’t seem to have a consistent policy, or likely the
manpower, to give a fair check to every parody. As such, it comes
off as just nitpicky and leaves itself open to accusations of being
biased.
More disturbing is this recent case highlighted by
Reason‘s Scott Shackford: A judge was OK with an
egotistical mayor
sending a SWAT team to catch a guy who parodied him.
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1CEEYJH
via IFTTT