A resourceful teenager appeared to have taken the rise of increasingly powerful smart home devices to its logical conclusion – tweeting from her family’s smart fridge after her mother confiscated her phone.
An Ariana Grande fan known only as “Dorothy” tweeted last week to say she was barred by her mother from using her phone but said she managed to find a number of innovative ways to reach her thousands of followers – a handheld Nintendo device, a Wii U gaming console and, finally, her family’s LG Smart Refrigerator.
The refrigerator tweet went viral on Monday, with more than 12,000 retweets. Twitter and LG stepped in and joined the calls for Dorothy to be returned to the internet, tweeting “#FreeDorothy”. The Guardian and many other outlets covered the saga.
But three days after the story made headlines, multiple researchers questioned whether Dorothy had really managed to crack her family’s fridge.
I do not know if this is going to tweet I am talking to my fridge what the heck my Mom confiscated all of my electronics again.
— dorothy 🏹 (@thankunext327) August 8, 2019
The story began with a tweet saying her mom had taken her phone on 4 August. Later, another tweet was published, seemingly from her mother, stating: “I seen [sic] that Dorothy has been using twitter on her Nintendo. This account will be shut down now.”
hey guys omg. my mom is at work so i’m looking for my phone. wish me luck. lov u #Mii #MiiMaker #WiiU pic.twitter.com/BaaAWUUjoV
— dorothy 🏹 (@thankunext327) August 6, 2019
A subsequent tweet said: “my mom took my phone and my nintendo ds so i have no choice but to use my wii … thank u all for the support and love.” The tweet’s source label, which indicates the device from which a tweet was sent, indicated that the tweet came from a Wii U.
Finally, Dorothy sent a tweet that she said was from her LG Smart refrigerator: “I’m talking to my fridge what the heck,.”
Dorothy spoke to the Guardian on Tuesday over Twitter. She declined to share her last name and said she was messaging from her cousin’s iPad because she was still facing a tech ban.
She said she was 15 and her mother had disciplined her two weeks ago after she got too distracted while cooking and caused a fire.
“She took all my tech so I’d pay more attention to my surroundings,” she said. “I felt mortified! I was worried because I’ve been bored all summer and Twitter passes the time for me”, she added.
Dorothy also said she was worried about losing her “mutuals” – accounts she follows that follow her back – and devised other ways to get tweets out. Her self-described “fan account” is used primarily to send tweets about Ariana Grande.
After reports emerged questioning Dorothy’s account, LG confirmed that some of its fridge models have social media capabilities, but the company could not confirm whether Dorothy’s tweet was sent from one.
“We don’t know if Dorothy actually used an LG smart refrigerator to tweet, but yes – it is possible to access Twitter via the web browser on select LG smart refrigerator models,” an LG spokeswoman, Taryn Brucha, said.
Igor Brigadir, a computer researcher at University College Dublin, reviewed the tweets for the Guardian and said that the metadata for Dorothy’s Wii U and Nintendo tweets showed that the tweets were legitimate. He said others had used the devices to post on Twitter in the past.
But the refrigerator tweet, Brigadir said, most likely did not come from the fridge. “The LG fridge [tweet] was definitely manually created,” he said.
Brigadir examined the metadata of the tweets and discovered that they were sent through a custom Twitter app. If Dorothy had tweeted from the fridge, Brigadir continued, the metadata would probably have said the tweet was sent through a browser, not from a fridge.
Dorothy was able to make it look like she tweeted from the fridge because custom apps can be renamed on Twitter to make tweets appear as though they were sent from different devices.
“For me, the think that seals it is the fact that nobody else ever made any other tweets from that fridge, whereas, for the Wii U and Nintendo clients, there’s fresh tweets daily,” Brigadir added.
Twitter did not respond to multiple requests for comment regarding the source of the tweet.
Luca Hammer, an independent social media analyst, said it was very likely Dorothy used a developer account to rename the source as “LG Smart Refrigerator”.
Dorothy stopped responding to the Guardian’s messages on Tuesday afternoon.
LG denied it was involved with the tweets. “No marketing ploy here! We learned about this in real time with the rest of the world and joined in the fun by tweeting #FreeDorothy – that’s the extent of our involvement!”, Brucha said.
This story was updated on 15 August with additional reporting casting doubt on the accuracy of Dorothy’s claims, including the analysis of Luca Hammer and Igor Brigadir. It also includes fresh comments from LG.