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One relatively common form of misinformation is the fake celebrity retweet. Sometimes this happens by accident — a person mistakenly retweets a parody account as real. Sometimes this happens happens by design, with an account faking a retweet. Here are some tips to make sure that the tweet you are looking at on Twitter is from the person you to whom you are atrributing it.

Twitter Identity Basics

Accounts are generally run by one person. One person can have multiple accounts. Handle does not change but display name can be changed at will.

Checking a Verified Accounts

Some people with a public profile (writers, politicians, actors, prominent scientists) have verified accounts.

These accounts have visual indicators associated with them. They don’t show up in all tweet views in the web interface, you may have to click through.

Sometimes people try to fake these indicators; an example is faking a verification symbol in a header. Hovering over the symbol is usually reliable.

“Signed Tweets”

Politicians and celebrities sometimes have other people run their accounts. In these cases a signature is often used to indicate personal statements of the candidate. This practice is usually signalled in the account description.

Fake Screenshots

Sometimes people fake screenshots of tweets that never happened.

Bots

Sometimes there isn’t a person on the other end of the line at all.

Professional Trolls

Trolls try to break up conversation. They often do this by pretending to be supporters of someone they actually oppose and making offiensive or divisive statements.