Mr. Boerman said he had tried hard to leave obvious hints that he was an impersonator. His tweet thread included unrealistic scenarios where all police officers’ guns were melted down and sold for scrap, with the proceeds going to the parks department. He made up an organization with a ludicrous name: the New York City Porcine Benevolent Association. He promoted his podcast to his relatively small Twitter following of 1,700 users.

“Pretty much everybody got that it was a joke immediately, which was my hope — I wasn’t trying to mislead anyone,” Mr. Boerman said. “The point was that this can be both a joke on the state of the network right now as well as an opportunity to think about the way that media is disseminated and how we think about our public figures.”

The removal of the blue verification badges caused “immediate and pure chaos,” but the novelty eventually wore off, he said. His profile name is now “bosh (not mayor anymore).” He said he was careful to confirm any announcement he saw on Twitter using other sources.

“The problem comes when you have accounts that maybe have hundreds of thousands of followers and are positioning themselves as the real thing,” Mr. Boerman said. “Twitter’s approach of ‘Well, if people pay for verification, certainly they must be legit’ is so inane I don’t even know how to put words to it.”