Valorant: Twitter Troll Impersonates the CEO of Esports Organisation Sentinels

In another instance of ruckus being caused by Elon Musk’s “blue tick” policy, the latest victim is the CEO of the American Esports Organization Sentinels, Rob Moore. The CEO was impersonated by a troller on Twitter, who announced the relieving of Sentinels’ Valorant team from the fake account. As for the damage caused, the Tweet gained quite a bit of traction before being taken down, as Moore did not really take all of this very lightly.

A fake account impersonating Sentinels CEO Rob Moore announces the releasing of the Valorant roster

On April 30th, a tweet from the handle of Rob Moore surfaced, “announcing” that the Sentinels Valorant roster has been “released”. The tweet which received almost four thousand likes and 142 retweets suggested that the Sentinels’ Valorant team had to be released as their ‘performance fell short of expectations’. Soon it was revealed that the Tweet wasn’t from the official Twitter handle of Rob Moore, but from a fake account, impersonating the Sentinels’ CEO. While Moore’s real official handle is “@robmooreEsports”, the fake account used the handle “@robmoreEsports”.

the CEO of Sentinels is being impersonated by a troll account

but since he isn’t verified it doesn’t count as impersonation ???? pic.twitter.com/97XBbw4uS0

— Hunter (@HUN2R) May 1, 2023

Twitter suggested the impersonation was not in violation of its policies as it didn’t misrepresent another “another person or business”

Moore was quick to act given that this kind of misinformation about a team that is currently in the middle of competitions is quite damaging. However, the response that he first received wasn’t of much help. As Moore reported the account, Twitter mailed back to him mentioning that the account is not in “violation of Twitter misleading and deceptive identities policy. In order for an account to be in violation of the policy, it must portray another person or business in a misleading or deceptive manner”. In a Tweet following this, Moore tagged Twitter Head Elon Musk, bringing the matter to his attention adding, “guess you really want my $8”.

⁦@elonmusk⁩ so someone creates an account using my name and title and tweets claiming to be me , I follow your process and receive the report back that this doesn’t violate your misleading identities policy..I guess you really want my $8 pic.twitter.com/qxUM8jJh3k

— Rob Moore (@robmooreEsports) May 1, 2023

Since then, the fake account has been suspended and the tweets taken down. However, what is interesting to note in this case is that neither the official account of Rob Moore, nor that of the impersonator had the “blue tick” verification. Moore on the other hand, was in fact a verified user previously before the rollout of Twitter Blue. One can’t help but notice how easy it is to get confused in such instances given that the CEO does in fact use his Twitter account like this for announcements about the Sentinels, only if he didn’t lose his blue tick. As for the Valorant roster of the Sentinels, they are currently participating in VCT Americas, and are gearing up to face Evil Geniuses on May 6.