New York boy creates profile of fake US congressional candidate, Twitter verifies it

“During Christmas break, I was kind of bored and I learned a lot from history class, but also on the news they were talking more about misinformation,” the 17-year-old told CNN Business.

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The teenager also claimed that it only took him about 20 minutes to make the website for his candidate and then another five minutes to create the Twitter account.

However, according to a report by The Hill, the student claimed that neither Twitter or Ballotpedia — an online portal which covers American federal, state, and local politics, elections, and public policies — asked for any identification proof to confirm that Walz was real.

The Twitter account for the fake candidate has been suspended and Ballotpedia also removed the profile from their page after they were notified that he was “not a legitimate candidate for office”.

The blue tick is usually given to prominent accounts of journalists, celebrities, politicians, government agencies and businesses.

Responding to the incident, a spokesperson for Twitter told CNET, “Unfortunately, an individual found loopholes in our process by submitting a fake candidate and a fake account for verification. The creation of a fake candidate account is in violation of our rules and the account has been permanently suspended.”

The fake account verification came at a time when candidates running for office accused the site of refusing to verify their accounts, CNN reported. Following the criticisms, Twitter recently tweaked its policy regarding verification and said it would verify primary candidates to help improve the information for voters on the platform, according to The Hill.