Paul Ongili Owino, also known as Babu Owino, a controversial politician has now threatened to quit the popular microblogging platform Twitter if he’s not verified in the next few days. This is after the Kenyan National Assembly member found out that Twitter had verified an account pretending to be him.
“Kenyans please ignore the FAKE ACCOUNT verified by Twitter, It’s fake and the perpetrators want to use it to soil my otherwise good name.” Babu Owino wrote, “If Twitter won’t verify my real account within the next few weeks then I’m sorry I will exit Twitter.Can’t/won’t settle for less at all.”
This comes just a few days after Twitter admitted it had mistakenly verified accounts just weeks after re-launching its public verification program. Data scientist Norteño discovered six verified accounts which had been created recently on June 16th. None of them had posted a single tweet, and two used what appeared to be stock photographs for profile pictures.
“We mistakenly approved the verification applications of a small number of inauthentic (fake) accounts,” Twitter told the Daily Dot in a statement. “We have now permanently suspended the accounts in question, and removed their verified badge, under our platform manipulation and spam policy.”
