Impostors posing as Chicago government officials, including Mayor Lori Lightfoot, posted a series of tweets early Friday morning falsely claiming that North Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Lake Shore Drive is being permanently closed.
The accounts posting the false tweets claimed to be Lightfoot, the Chicago Department of Transportation and the Illinois Department of Transportation. Their posts were seen by well over 100,000 people early in the day, according to Twitter data.
The impersonation effort came just a day after Twitter removed verification from accounts that had been previously verified for the purpose of credibility. Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s controversial decision to remove the “legacy” verifications took away the authenticated status of all three of the impersonated accounts.
“We’re excited to announce that beginning 5/1/23, N. DuSable Lake Shore Drive will be closed to private vehicles between Grand and Hollywood,” the account falsely posing as CDOT wrote.
The accounts falsely impersonating IDOT and Lightfoot also shared the message.
“My administration is proud to announce the single largest decarbonization effort in the history of Chicago. This will eliminate more than 50 million metric tons of CO2 within the next year,” the account falsely impersonating Lightfoot wrote.
After a Tribune reporter first flagged the impersonations in a tweet, mayoral spokesperson Ryan Johnson shared that the Lightfoot administration was aware of the fake accounts and working with Twitter to resolve the matter.
People can verify official city accounts by visiting chi.gov/social, he added.
Shortly after Johnson’s post flagging the deceit was shared, another fake account emerged, impersonating him. It falsely claimed again that the closure of North DuSable Lake Shore Drive was in fact real, directly refuting the Tribune reporter who had written that the claims were false.
The impostor accounts had all been suspended by Friday afternoon. It was not immediately clear who was behind the falsehoods.
Each fake account had used slight variations from the spelling of the account it attempted to impersonate or listed otherwise believable usernames. They made posts with serious tones that did not clearly signal the accounts were satirical.
Johnson told the Tribune on Friday that despite Twitter’s recent layoffs, company employees were “pretty responsive” in quickly addressing the impostor accounts.
He acknowledged that such fake posts had the potential to alarm residents, though he declined to speculate on what the consequences might be if other false information posted by impostors is able to remain on the platform in the future.
“Today just showed us that we have to be vigilant and move swiftly,” Johnson said.
Before Friday, the usernames of the true mayoral account, CDOT account and IDOT account had all previously appeared alongside a blue check mark signaling that the accounts had been proved to actually represent the authorities they claimed to represent. However, those check marks were taken away Thursday because of Musk’s decision.
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As a result of the decision, dozens of celebrities, politicians and other notable people lost their verified status. Many journalists, including dozens of Tribune reporters, who had been previously verified in an effort to signal their trustworthiness also lost their verified status Thursday.
Twitter users now have the option to pay $8 each month to receive an apparently identical blue check mark. However, that check mark no longer means the user is verified for credibility and instead signals that the user’s phone number has been verified, they have paid for verification and their account is older than 30 days, according to Twitter.
Organizations must now pay $1,000 per month to be verified, though some governmental accounts, including President Joe Biden’s, have received a different gray checkmark to signal that they are credible governmental accounts.
The social media platform says on its website that verified accounts must be “nondeceptive.”
CDOT and IDOT are in fact currently working on an effort to re-imagine North DuSable Lake Shore Drive with the “Redefine the Drive” study.
The effort could lead to an overhaul of the iconic road, including possibly building sprawling parks alongside and above it. The agencies are currently soliciting public feedback for the effort.
