A number of new accounts with a blue check mark appeared this week impersonating politicians, celebrities and brands – including President Biden – after the launch of the new program on Wednesday. It’s part of Elon Musk’s plan to create more revenue streams after his $44 billion acquisition of the site two weeks ago.
A fake account claiming to be basketball star LeBron James falsely tweeted that the athlete was asking for a deal. “I miss killing Iraqis,” tweeted another fake account with a blue check mark pretending to be former President George W. Bush.
A fake account pretending to be drug giant Eli Lilly garnered 1,500 retweets and more than 10,000 likes and remained online three hours later on Thursday afternoon. A spokesperson for Eli Lilly told The Post Thursday that they are “in contact with Twitter to address the issue.”
Twitter appears to be playing a whack-a-mole game with fake accounts – some were suspended by Friday, but many remained online. The company’s rollout of new features in its Twitter Blue subscription product has been tough, and by Thursday night, several people reported that the Blue subscription option had disappeared from their apps.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The decision to pause a new premium product under Musk marks two weeks of chaos under the new owner, the world’s richest man who is also a Twitter superuser. Musk, who already sees himself as CEO of companies like Tesla and SpaceX, has moved quickly to implement the changes and has had to backtrack several times in recent days.
Last week, he laid off nearly half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, raising concerns about the company’s ability to police misinformation and other harmful content on the site. Over the weekend, the company tried to rehire some of them.
Civil rights groups have called on advertisers to suspend their Twitter campaigns, and many have done so. A series of executives have left the company — perhaps most notably, the company’s chief content officer, who participated in a public meeting on Twitter Spaces with Musk and advertisers on Wednesday.
Musk also ordered employees to return to the office, reversing the tech company’s policy that all workers can stay away — making further departures a possibility.
Twitter Blue is Musk’s first major product change: a complete overhaul of the Twitter verification system – unlocks the process for obtaining a blue check mark badge for users who were willing to pay. The initial release was brought back again as Musk expressed concerns about its design.
These kinds of rapid product rollouts have been particularly worrisome to privacy staff, some of whom quit Thursday. They said they needed full security reviews required under Twitter’s entry order with the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year, following allegations that the company deceptively used phone numbers and other personal information for advertising purposes.
However, Musk tweeted overnight that the site had the highest level of active users on Thursday.
Musk got into trouble with account impersonation last weekend, when many people changed their name online to pretend they were a billionaire. By Thursday, he had tweet link Twitter updated its rules and said, “Accounts engaging in parody must include ‘parody’ in their names, not just in bios.”
From now on, accounts involved in parody must include “parody” in their names, not just in a resume.
– Elon Musk November 11, 2022
An internal Twitter note said that while Twitter Blue is paused, existing users will still have access to subscription features.
In one example of the abuse, an account with a blue checkmark badge pretending to be affiliated with Arizona Governor candidate Carrie Lake tweeted the victory Thursday, claiming “She won. She decided so it’s true.”
But the account, titled TheRealKariLake, is not the candidate’s official account. And the race for Arizona’s next governor is still premature — Flick, the Republican nominee, is in a tight race with Democrat Katie Hobbs.
Users can click the blue check mark and see if the account was paid to be verified or was part of the old Twitter software, but it’s hard to tell otherwise. (the post also found That there appears to be an error in the popups describing blue check marks – sometimes showing accounts as “highlighted” when they are paid instead.)
There seem to be other errors with paid verification – the fake Lake account was showing up with a blue check mark for some users, but not for others.
The fake accounts of James, Bush and Eli Lilly have been suspended. But impersonation accounts with blue checkmarks for other companies and high-profile personalities remained online on Friday morning.
Additionally, the company said in its internal memo that it will add a gray “official” tag to advertisers’ accounts.
Earlier this week, the company appeared to be putting up a second rating to indicate whether the accounts were official, but it quickly retracted it.
Musk tweeted on Wednesday that he said,I killed herand CEO of Twitter clearer Later the company was focusing on using the badges for “government and commercial entities” rather than individuals.
“Apart from being an aesthetic nightmare when looking at a Twitter feed, it’s simply another way to create a two-tier system,” Musk said during Twitter Spaces on Wednesday. “It wasn’t addressing the fundamental problem of having too many entities to be considered official or have old blue checkmarks.”
Even real official accounts noticed the chaos on Twitter on Friday. The official account of the Washington State Department of Natural Resources chirp“Update: Twitter’s wildfire area is 44 billion acres and 0% contained.”
Drew Harwell contributed to this report.
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