Twitter has shut down a fake account that was impersonating Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps and urging people to vote NDP in the provincial election.
Helps and the City of Victoria filed four complaints with Twitter from Friday to Wednesday seeking to remove the @LisaHelps account.
Initially, the city received only a form letter saying the ongoing public health emergency might delay its response times.
“It is frustrating and very disturbing,” Helps said in an interview before the account was closed. “What does this say about that platform or the ability of people to use it in an honest and truthful way?”
But after the Times Colonist contacted Twitter to inquire about the city’s complaints, the company issued a statement saying the fake account had been “permanently suspended for user impersonation.”
“Maybe it took the media to get the social media to behave,” Helps said. “I attribute your call to their [communications] people to getting this fixed.”
The fake account appeared on Twitter this month and featured a photograph of Helps with the legislative buildings in the background above the sentence: “I’m back on Twitter now.”
Helps said she spoke at a national oceans event on Tuesday and one of the attendees tweeted a thank you to the fake account, which responded by saying: “Glad I could be of value…”
“The imposter has tweeted endorsing the B.C. NDP in the election, whereas I have always maintained a non-partisan approach as mayor,” she said.
Helps said the account posed a reputational risk to herself and the city that could have real consequences.
“What troubles me is the negative impact that social media has on democracy,” she said. “If anyone can be anyone, without consequence, how do we know what is real and what is fake?”
Helps quit Twitter in July after receiving a flood of negative comments about homelessness in response to an unrelated tweet about a proposed business hub for the marine sector.
She said at the time that she wasn’t bothered by the criticism, but felt the comments distracted from the uplifting stories of business- and citizen-led initiatives that she was trying to highlight.
