Chaos Follows Elon Musk’s Twitter Blue Rollout As Fake Accounts Proliferate
On Wednesday, Twitter launched a new feature that gave organizations and celebrities a grey “official” badge, but it quickly removed it.
After taking over as Twitter’s new CEO, Elon Musk formally introduced the pay-for-verification mechanism, and some users have already abused it. For $8 a month, those who disseminate fake news can use the tool to mimic someone else, and their content will be algorithmically promoted with no editorial oversight. Many people have been impacted by this, including American professional basketball player LeBron James.
James is portrayed as wanting to be traded by the Lakers on a bogus account that is becoming more popular. Then there is the phony Nintendo of America account, which displays an image of the well-known Mario figure giving the middle finger (and has a blue tick).
The new Twitter Blue subscription has a blue tick that looks somewhat like the ones given to celebrities. The new tick appears precisely the same as a user scrolls through the feed. The distinction becomes apparent when users click on the badge and learn whether it was given to a famous person or purchased by a Twitter Blue subscriber.
Although several of these accounts have been suspended, the platform has already seen an increase in these fraudulent posts. Additionally, it is getting harder for Twitter to verify the account at the time of payment or to promptly stop it from disseminating bogus news as a result of mass layoffs.
On Wednesday, Twitter introduced a new feature that gave celebrities and organizations a grey “official” badge, but it quickly removed it.
Within hours of the new tag being applied to official accounts from the government, large corporations, and important media sites, Elon Musk tweeted, “I just killed it.”
“Twitter will do a lot of stupid stuff in the upcoming months, so please be aware of that. We will continue to use what works and adjust what doesn’t “Adding to explain the U-turn, the richest guy on earth
Following a protracted legal dispute, Mr. Musk took over Twitter. On Tuesday, it was discovered that he had sold $4 billion worth of Tesla stock to help pay for a deal in which he had taken on enormous amounts of debt.
