A popular Twitter account that goes by the name PoliticsVideoChannel has reportedly been spreading 'fake news' and indulging in online trolling using different identities. The Twitter account PoliticsVideoChannel, the bio of which reads 'this is the Account of the Channel on Youtube Called Politics Video Channel, has more than one lakh followers. But the account is not what it claims as there was no YouTube channel the said name. Moreover, the account on Twitter had a different identity sometimes back, a more popular one - CNN Breaking News.
The account indulges in online trolling and spreads fake and misleading information or news without citing any source of the info. The Twitter account was first created in February 2016 but a search for tweets before 12/31/2016 returns with no results. So it means, 1.) either the account didn't post a single tweet till December 12, 2016, 2.) deleted previous tweets. In this case, the second thing is more likely to have happened in the case.
Previous tweets deleted
The tweets were deleted to hide the previous identity from users. However, when we checked archive.org to see if they have archived any pages from the previous handle, we found one page for CNN Breaking News handle. You can check the archived version here.
Know you may have the question in your mind that how do we know that these two handles are of the same account. Most users don't know that Twitter keeps an ID number for each account and even if you are changing the handle, it will remain the same. This ID number can be found in the HTML page or via the Twitter backend interface (API). You can check the Twitter ID of any account from https://tweeterid.com/.
It is advised not to follow fake and misleading news spreader accounts on Twitter or any other social media site. This is one crucial way to stop the menace of fake news. We at IBTimes India are on a mission to debunk fake news and expose fake news spreaders. Read more fact news stories here.
