Since President Donald Trump placed a gag, or order of silence, on dozens of government agencies and scientists, some “rogue” accounts have started to pop up in rebellion. Shortly after the president’s decree, the official Twitter account for Badlands National Park in South Dakota defied Trump’s command by tweeting facts backing the existence of climate change, a theory supported by 97 percent of climate scientists.

The tweets were deleted shortly after and the account has resumed normal social media activity. This action gave birth to many rogue and alt social media accounts that are unverified, but defiant toward Trump. As a result, many are struggling to understand whether social media posts are legitimate and factual or #FakeNews and #AlternativeFacts. Twitter and other social media platforms will have to take a stance quickly to either promote this kind of activity or silence unofficial accounts. From the federal government’s perspective, it is likely officials will condemn any “rogue” activity and search for the perpetrators. To do this, they would need social media monitoring software to identify accounts and find those responsible. However, Twitter has voiced opposition to revealing personal information associated with personal accounts, even to the government. Internal self-policing may be the only realistic solution federal officials have. Twitter already performs “digital fingerprint” assessments when accounts are created to identify copyrighted and trademarked graphics. Many rogue accounts will be forced to use non-copyrighted logos.