If you have been catching up with the latest news, you would have known that Elon Musk just took over Twitter very recently and made some sweeping changes. He is very active on Twitter (which makes sense, since he owns it now), and people have been tagging him on their tweets, looking for help on something.
The former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, has been in the prison since 23 August 2022, but his social media accounts are still rather active.
Some users on Twitter have been calling for the ban of his account because they allege that someone hacked his account and is impersonating him.
One netizen even said that the account is violating Twitter’s terms of engagement.
Is the account really violating Twitter rules? We have decided to take a closer look at The Twitter Rules. One of the rules under the Authenticity category, Misleading and Deceptive Identities says that:
You may not impersonate individuals, groups, or organizations to mislead, confuse, or deceive others, nor use a fake identity in a manner that disrupts the experience of others on Twitter.
The Twitter Rules
The netizen might be referring to this rule when they claimed that someone is impersonating Najib Razak on Twitter. But when we read further, Twitter didn’t prohibit a user from handling someone else’s Twitter account on their behalf.
Even though the former PM is sitting in prison right now, that doesn’t mean someone hacked his account. He could have appointed someone to handle his social media accounts. Twitter allows the account owner to appoint admins to manage their accounts through TweetDeck.
The account is not fake either; he started tweeting in September 2008, and it is a verified account. Netizens who tagged Musk and Twitter, asking the company to ban his account, didn’t provide any proof of their allegations.
