I think the tweeter may end up having problems over the fact that she did try to exploit the tweets for fame and advantage. If it had been just sharing observations about something happening around her, she'd likely be fine. Trying to gain personally from the story makes it much more shaky on an ethical level for me.
And there's no excuse for encouraging people to seek out the subject's identity. Awful idea all around.
Fake advertising for the purpose of creating discord is as old as political advertising.
I had a friend run for state legislature in the 1990s, his opponent sent people around targeted neighborhoods passing out fake flyers for my friend's campaign. They used his name and photo, but attributed positions he did not hold to him.
I imagine before cheap printing, it was gossip. I'm sure it's been the case since democracy started.
I was also a sales engineer 20 years ago. There was a ton of drinking involved, but never anything wilder. I was honestly a bit surprised how tame the after-hours excursions were given what I'd heard from friends at other companies with similar clients. Ability to drink heavily was a requirement of anyone on the sales team though.
I did get a lot of nice dinners and bbq lunches. Seriously, every client had a favorite bbq place they had to show off. Weird in retrospect.
As far as I can tell, that's what the people running the site want it to be. It's been a problem for years and years now and no action has been taken to stop it.
The most effective method is probably to spend a couple hundred a night to hire a security guard to sit with the hives while they're all so concentrated.
I keep thinking I read Gibson said something along the lines of "Delany's Nova was his attempt to reach the heights of The Stars My Destination, and Neuromancer was my attempt to reach Nova."
But I haven't been able to find it again. Maybe I imagined it.