X is full of accounts that imitate real-life celebrities, from politicians to sports experts to artists. Some accounts have “parody” written in their display names, others have “parody” written in their profiles, and some people, such as newscasters, mistake them for real accounts.
The platform is developing new labels for parody or fan comment accounts to more clearly identify them as parody accounts, according to several app reverse engineers.
If a company deploys a label and a parody account adopts it, the label “parody account” will appear under the username on the user's profile page and in their posts. This means it's less likely that someone will confuse a post from a parody account with a real person's account.
The platform's toughest challenge may be forcing parody accounts to apply labels to their profiles. Currently, X's authenticity policy has a clause regarding parody accounts, requiring them to follow the platform's rules of not attempting to impersonate other profiles for the purpose of spreading misinformation.
“We allow compliant parody, commentary, and fan (PCF) accounts on X for the purpose of discussion, satire, or information sharing,” the policy reads.
If a new label is rolled out, X should also have a policy for how satirical accounts should adopt that label. If most parody accounts did not adopt this label, users would be confused.
In particular, X already has a label for automated bot accounts that use the social network's API to automatically post updates. However, not all bot accounts respect these rules and apply the labels. There have been numerous reports of bad actors using various automated techniques to control election-related narratives using bot accounts.