The FT’s Wolf deals with a social media impersonator

Financial Times chief economics commentator Martin Wolf writes about a fake “Martin Wolf” that is doling out financial advice on social media.

Wolf writes, “I have an alter ego or, as it is now known on the internet, an avatar. My avatar looks like me and sounds at least a bit like me. He pops up constantly on Facebook and Instagram. Colleagues who understand social media far better than I do have tried to kill this avatar. But so far at least they have failed.

“Why are we so determined to terminate this plausible-seeming version of myself? Because he is a fraud — a “deepfake”. Worse, he is also literally a fraud: he tries to get people to join an investment group that I am allegedly leading. Somebody has designed him to cheat people, by exploiting new technology, my name and reputation and that of the FT. He must die. But can we get him killed?

“I was first introduced to my avatar on March 11 2025. A former colleague brought his existence to my attention and I brought him at once to that of experts at the FT.

“It turned out that he was in an advertisement on Instagram for a WhatsApp group supposedly run by me. That means Meta, which owns both platforms, was indirectly making money from the fraud.”

Read more here. The FT issued a statement that reads, in part: “The FT takes this matter extremely seriously. We are actively working to ensure that Meta removes these posts and to safeguard the integrity of our journalists and reputation.”