Topline
The rollout of Twitter’s paid verification badges triggered confusion and chaos on the social media platform on Wednesday as several new “verified” accounts impersonating important public figures and companies like Donald Trump, Lebron James and Nintendo began to pop up almost immediately, forcing the platform to shut these accounts down.
Twitter’s roll out of paid verification has been a mess so far with the emergence of several … [+]
Key Facts
With the rollout of the new Blue subscription service, Twitter no longer authenticates the owner of an account receiving a verified badge, allowing impersonator accounts to easily masquerade as the real thing.
An account pretending to be NBA superstar LeBron James tweeted that he was requesting to be traded from the Lakers while another account impersonating MLB Pitcher and current free agent Aroldis Chapman tweeted he will be staying with the Yankees—with both tweets receiving thousands of retweets and likes before being taken down.
A British user was able to get a fake Donald Trump account verified and tweet out “This is why Elon Musk’s plan doesn’t work,” before the account was taken down by Twitter.
A fake Rudy Giulliani account also popped up and posted several lewd or controversial tweets about Nancy Pelosi, Greg Abbott, Kyrie Irving and others before being taken down.
Impersonation accounts were not just limited to individuals—an account impersonating video game maker Nintendo tweeted out a photo of Mario flipping off his middle finger while even Twitter was not spared as an account pretending to be the official account for the social media company tweeted out a crypto scam that received more than 35,000 retweets.
News Peg
On Wednesday, Twitter attempted to preempt this problem by handing out gray “official” badges to verified accounts that belong to celebrities, government officials and companies. But this system was “killed” by its new CEO and owner Elon Musk just minutes after it rolled out. Musk justified this decision by saying “Blue check will be the great leveler.” Since then, Twitter has been forced to play whack-a-mole with the fake “verified” accounts as new ones keep popping up just as the older ones are deleted. “We’re not currently putting an “Official” label on accounts but we are aggressively going after impersonation and deception,” Twitter said in a statement late on Wednesday.
What To Watch For
A potential, although slightly unwieldy, solution to the confusion around fake verified accounts does exist, at least for now. Clicking on an account’s verified badge shows a disclaimer about the account. Those which were authenticated under Twitter’s old verification process show the disclaimer: “This account is verified because it’s notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category.” Accounts which paid for verification using Twitter Blue carry the disclaimer: “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue.” One has to open an account’s profile page and then click on their blue verified badge to get the disclaimer to display, but it could help users weed out impersonators. However, after one user pointed this out to Musk, the billionaire tweeted: “We are changing the text to say ‘Legacy Verified. Could be notable, but could also be bogus.’” Musk has previously said that he doesn’t want any distinction between older verified accounts and those who pay for the badge, which could lead to the disclaimer being removed altogether.
Crucial Quote
After canceling the rollout of the official gray badges on Wednesday, Musk tweeted: “Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.”
Further Reading
Musk Warns Twitter Will Permanently Ban Impersonators—After He Gets Parodied By Verified Users (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/11/10/twitter-tries-to-clamp-down-on-verified-impersonator-accounts-as-musk-hints-at-more-changes/