A troll on Twitter has impersonated the CEO of the esports organization Sentinels, Rob Moore, and said the company has released its Valorant team.
Sentinels CEO Rob Moore was impersonated on Twitter on April 30 as an account with the same name announced that the organization has dropped its Valorant roster. The tweet got some attention as it racked up almost 4,000 likes and 142 retweets, according to a screenshot taken by Hunter Grooms.
Moore, who was previously a verified user but lost his blue checkmark due to the rollout of Twitter Blue and the de-verification of legacy checkmarks, reported the account to Twitter the same day. He showcased a screenshot of the response given to him by Twitter Support saying that the impersonator was “not in violation of Twitter’s misleading and deceptive identities policy.”
“I guess you really want my $8,” Moore said.
Neither the imposter nor Moore paid for Twitter Blue so neither had a blue checkmark and the only difference in their accounts was that the imposter’s username only had one “o” in Moore.
The account has since been suspended and the Tweet about releasing the Sentinels Valorant team is no longer up.
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The impersonation was successful on some fronts, fooling some of the Valorant community, as the CEO regularly relays team news like benchings and firings to fans via his personal Twitter account. But, some esports fans and industry figures were able to suss out the fake and instead made fun of the attempted impersonation.
@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
“Role issues? I can relate,” Cloud9 Jack Etienne said in response to the imposter, referencing his own parting of ways with Valorant star Jaccob ‘yay’ Whiteaker.
Esports Twitter has had a unique relationship with Twitter as some companies have jumped at the chance to pay for the different levels of verification and affiliation for their creators and professional players, while others continue to keep hold of the money that would be used on Twitter for other parts of their business.
As of now, Sentinels is still keeping on its Valorant squad as it is set to take on Evil Geniuses on May 6 in VCT Americas.
