Heather Davis, born April 1991, lives in Jamestown, New York. She joined Twitter in June 2011 but doesn't use it much. In over six years she's tweeted just 331 times, the last time over a year ago when she wrote: "Heading to bed can't wait to watch #ClashofChampions tomorrow night". Her bio mentions her kids – a couple of them peek out of the banner photo at the top of her page – and offers a short vignette of her personality: "I speak the truth I'm a loyal friend I don't like drama I'm honest." Her Twitter handle is @TwIzTeD_bItCh.
Heather, aka @TwIzTeD__bItCh – call her Heather 2 – joined Twitter in April 2014. She's more of a fan of the site than Heather 1, with quadruple the number of tweets in half the time. Also from Jamestown, her profile image shows the same woman, with a similar banner picture and similar bio – "I speak the truth whether you want to hear it or not". Her last tweet, just before we finished this article, was a retweet of an article about "Healthy Living for your Brain and Body".
The two Heathers exist in parallel, with only an extra underscore in the Twitter user name to separate them. One of them is a real person. The other is fake.
Back in July Heather 2 also took a passing interest in South African politics. Retweeting a comment from the pressure group Black Land First, she wrote: "The attacks are synchronized and well coordinated by agents of white monopoly capital. #HandsoffPublicProtector".
As the Bureau tried to unravel a notorious case of Twitter fakery, we found ourselves deep in the bizarre, globe-spanning and secretive world of the online influence industry. Our investigation took us from the implosion of UK PR firm Bell Pottinger, through a succession of identity thefts, to the robot apocalypse.
Read the full story here.
This article also appeared on the New Statesmen's NS Tech.
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