Shamann Walton's 'hacked' Twitter now features pic of Utah money man

A week after Walton posted on Instagram that his Twitter account was hacked and that he hadn't been able to regain access since Elon Musk's frenetic takeover of the platform, Walton's Twitter profile picture and header featured a person who was decidedly not the president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Well into Wednesday, Walton's photos matched the profile picture and pinned tweet of Matt Diamond, a Salt Lake City day trader who has more followers than Walton on both Twitter (12,400 vs. 9,125) and Instagram (20,000 vs. 5,410).

Walton's Twitter bio strongly resembled Diamond's, too, save for one character: The latter said its tweets are "for informational purposes only," while the former said "for informational purpose only."

But Walton's bio had changed, and the pictures of Diamonds were removed, shortly after The Examiner published this story on Wednesday. Walton's description once again read, "Member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors; Husband, father and grandfather; Fighter for community."

That's not because the supervisor regained access to his account, however. Natalie Gee, Walton's chief of staff, told The Examiner in an email on Thursday morning that they weren't even aware Walton's profile no longer featured similar identifying information to Diamond.

Still pinned to Walton's updated profile, however, is a Nov. 22 tweet promoting Diamond's "Day Trading Options Guide." It includes identical language to Diamond's pinned tweet. 

Walton said in a statement earlier on Wednesday afternoon that his constituents informed him on Nov. 22 that his account was hacked, but he hadn't been able to access his account since Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter on Oct. 27.

It's unclear why Walton's account bore the image of a Salt Lake City man who sells a day trading guide. The link in Walton's biography still directed to his campaign website, even as it included pictures of Diamond and a pinned tweet promoting his guide.

Diamond and Walton don't follow each other on Twitter, either. Diamond didn't respond to a Twitter direct message requesting comment, which included questions about his awareness of the hack.

Twitter hasn't responded to "multiple requests" to help retrieve the account, according to Walton. Musk fired about half of Twitter's 7,500 full-time employees earlier beginning on Nov. 4, and at least 1,200 resigned nearly two weeks ago.

Musk also laid off thousands of contractors, many of whom worked in content moderation. Since his takeover, the rollout of new verification procedures gave way to users impersonating public figures and publicly traded companies after spending as little as $8 on a monthly subscription. 

Twitter pulled the plug on the feature, and Musk said last week that the company would not relaunch it without "high confidence of stopping impersonation."

"If my community and followers want to continue to report the account, they may do so but I don't feel the need to waste energy on Twitter," Walton said in a statement.

Twitter didn't respond to an emailed request for comment prior to publication. The platform's public relations team was among the departments to experience significant layoffs. Musk previously dissolved Tesla's PR team, and he hasn't replaced them since.

The billionaire tweeted on Nov. 6 that the platform would permanently suspend accounts impersonating another. He said that verified accounts changing their name would temporarily lose their verified checkmark.

Walton's account maintains a checkmark, as it hasn't changed its handle or display name. Earlier on Wednesday, the profile picture clearly showed Diamond — a white man — rather than Walton, the first Black man elected president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Now, the account has the default silhouette that every new user has when they first create an account. Walton's chief of staff said the supervisor and his team weren't aware of the change to his Twitter account until The Examiner reported on it.

"We haven’t heard anything from Twitter and the Supervisor has made it clear that he doesn’t want to waste more time on this," Gee wrote in an email to The Examiner on Thursday.