Is @BarackObama Like a Parody Twitter Account?

Philip
Bump at The Wire writes that the twitter account @barackobama, run
by Organizing For Action not the president, is
essentially a parody twitter account:

When I spoke with an official from OFA last year, I was
told that the organization didn’t think people should be confused.
The account’s bio clearly states it’s run by OFA, and it notes that
any tweets actually from Obama will be signed “-bo.” (Over at least
the past four months, there have been zero tweets signed in that
way.) But the bio only shows up when you go to http://ift.tt/GZueMp;
retweets of OFA’s Obama tweets don’t indicate that it’s not the man
himself doing the tweeting.

So what ends up happening is that people (like the confused,
mourning girl at right) think they’re interacting with Obama, just
as people who respond to @WiIIISmith or whatever think they’re
interacting with the celebrity. And at no point, it seems, has the
OFA used the @BarackObama account to clarify to people that they’re
mistaken in thinking the account is Obama himself (or even his
staff) tweeting the president’s thoughts.

Bump highlights tweets from the @barackobama account about

Michael Sam and about

House of Cards, picked up by various media outlets and reported
as statements made by the president, not statements from a twitter
account run by OFA,
the 501(c)4 that is supposed to be primarily about “social welfare”
civic issues but also runs @barackobama and barackobama.com.

OFA’s 501(c)4 status was made possible by the decision
inCitizen’s United, and the organization operates under the same
rules as a wide swath of opposition 501(c)4s that were given extra
scrutiny by the feds. 501(c)4s, in fact, are something Democrats

use as a kind of scapegoat even as they rely on their own to
try to influence and win elections too.