It’s a simple rule: don’t feed the trolls. They distract you from doing your work, which is part of their objective. Second, there’s nothing to be gained by engaging with them. Some aren’t overly hostile, just contrarian, but by the time you figured that out, you’ve been sucked into a 30-plus tweet thread. Those traps are the worst. And then, there’s the “Erica Marshs” of Twitter who are beyond incendiary, hoping for hate click engagement.
This person does not exist. I repeat. Does NOT exist. This is election interference starting early. I will not even link to their page because it is dangerous to continue to follow and engage. This is an account bot linked to Belgium.
— Greg Boulden Host of America Emboldened (@RealGregBoulden) July 2, 2023
This also shows how easy our elections are… pic.twitter.com/i2EivbJIQe
“Marsh” was a viral gold mine, amassing over 100,000 followers with her left-wing antics on the platform, but the account has been suspended because this woman never existed. Reportedly, she was part of a marketing ploy from a Belgian consulting firm. Greg Boulden did the heavy lifting, sifting through the account and finding the discrepancies that exposed “Erica Marsh” as fake. But why did it take so long for this fake account to be exposed as a troll bot (via WaPo):
The “proud Democrat” in Washington, as she described herself on Twitter, doesn’t show up in any local phone or voting records. The Biden presidential campaign, where she said she worked as a field organizer, has no record of her; neither does the Obama Foundation, where she claimed to have volunteered.
Her only other known social media profile, on TikTok, posts copies of her tweets but has never included her speaking or showing her face. And a digital-imaging expert said that the three purported selfies she’s posted on Twitter — showing a young, smiling blond woman — bear the hallmarks of digital manipulation.
“I strongly suspect that this person doesn’t exist,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto who studies online disinformation. “It’s as if she dropped from the moon and arrived fully formed with this narrative that makes liberals look like idiots.”
[…]
She waved off doubters by saying repeatedly that she was not a “parody,” “fake person or a robot,” but tweeted once that she wished she were, because “it would make navigating Twitter a lot easier.”
She declined to share details about herself by saying she had a “terrifying” stalker from social media, adding, “I’ve learned from mistakes in the past and choose not to share much of my personal life.” Last week, as people questioned her legitimacy, she asked her Twitter followers to recommend a defamation attorney to her.
When it came to political commentary, she seemed to regard every polarizing news story as an opportunity to offer her opinion and to solicit her fans to promote her to their own networks.
She started her account in September 2022, shortly before Musk’s takeover, with a rapid-fire series of left-leaning tweets and requests for people to retweet if they agreed. It worked: In November and December, she was gaining more than 1,000 followers a day, according to audience data from the social media analytics firm SocialBlade.
Now, of course, the publication went into a tangent about new Twitter policies under Elon Musk while also throwing in there in passing that similar fake accounts pushing pro-Trump messages were popping up in Eastern Europe. Yes, our side has troll accounts, too. And if they get busted, suspend them. But it’s clear that " Marsh " could operate freely for so long because this person, whoever is behind it, is just one account. Twitter is a vast platform operating in an infinite space called the Internet, and no one has the time to Internet sleuth until now. It’s not like she was a pressing story, given the Biden bribery allegations, cocaine in the White House, Hunter’s sordid exploits at the Chateau Marmont, and the First Family’s other shady government access deals with disreputable figures. The economy is shaky, inflation is high, and we’re adrift abroad. Afghanistan collapsed, and now we’re bankrolling a new war in Ukraine. Unmasking Marsh was a backburner project, but some people got to it.
You will see some of this information in my substack tonight. Lots of hands going into sourcing this. Nice work to all in the background. https://t.co/iaJ7MmbaPI
— Greg Boulden Host of America Emboldened (@RealGregBoulden) July 3, 2023
It's a bit interesting. And if you’ve ever seen “Marsh’s” posts, you’d have your suspicions, too. Even the most ardent leftists, like MSNBC’s Joy Reid, wouldn’t have acted like “Marsh” on Twitter, and Reid is out there.
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