This is what happens when your biggest fans are bots.

["DAVID FARBER" <dfarber () me com>]

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Suzanne Johnson <fuhn () pobox com>
> Subject: This is what happens when your biggest fans are bots.
> Date: August 8, 2017 at 8:43:04 AM EDT
> To: "DAVID J. FARBER" <farber () gmail com>
>
>
> ...clip
>
> Here’s how we got here: On Saturday, a Twitter account with the handle @ProTrump45 tweeted a meme declaring that 
> “Trump fights for us,” along with the message, “Trump working hard for the American people….thanks to Trump.” In 
> response, Trump sent a thank-you 
> <https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/893970139565129730?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Ftalkingpointsmemo.com%2Fmuckraker%2Ftrump-retweets-nicole-mincey>
>  message to the account, which was attached to a profile attributing ownership to a woman named “Nicole Mincey.” It 
> didn’t take long for the hivemind internet to discover that Nicole Mincey ran a virtual store also named ProTrump45 
> that sells Trump-branded merchandise.
>
> ...clip
>
> As Twitter user @Rschooley pointed out in a lengthy but brilliant thread 
> <https://twitter.com/rschooley/status/894061672146411521?refsrc=email&s=11>, Nicole Mincey is not a real person. The 
> image of her supposed face actually belongs to a model who appeared on PlaceIt, a site that will put anything you 
> want on the front of a T-shirt. Nicole Mincey was just one of countless PlaceIt models whose images had somehow been 
> transformed into a legion of Trump Twitterbots.
>
> ...clip
>
> http://www.alternet.org/media/trump-just-helped-prove-how-fake-his-twitter-following 
> <http://www.alternet.org/media/trump-just-helped-prove-how-fake-his-twitter-following>




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