Twitter Blue ‘verification’ check unavailable as fake accounts surge on platform
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Salma Hossein
- . November 12, 2022
- . Update: November 12, 2022 8:06 pm
Twitter’s premium service that was launched after the new owner Elon Musk took over, that grants the ‘prestigious’ blue tick to all the users who are willing to subscribe to pay for verification scheme with $8 fee per month, has been made unavailable. The recent step was taken after the platform witnessed a huge spike in number of fake accounts as well as imposters with verification.
Before Musk purchased the company following a chaotic deal of $44 billion, the “blue check” was granted to celebrities and journalists who had been verified by the platform, a step that was precisely to prevent any impersonation. By making it a pay scheme, Musk made it an open party for all to get a verification blue check as long as they had an account and $8 per month to spare.
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As expected, the new service failed miserably as soon as it was launched after the users made fake accounts impersonating people including Pope Francis and former US President George W Bush. The pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co had to apologize after an impostor account of the company had tweeted that insulin was free. The other fake accounts came in name of Nintendo, Lockheed Martin, Musk’s own Tesla and SpaceX along with many professional sportspersons.
“They have created overwhelming reputational risk for placing advertising investments on the platform,” said Lou Paskalis, longtime marketing and media executive and former Bank of America head of global media, adding that “with the fake verified brand accounts, a picture emerges of a platform in disarray that no media professional would risk their career by continuing to make advertising investments on, and no governance apparatus or senior executive would condone if they did.”
On Thursday, Musk tweeted that “too many corrupt legacy Blue ‘verification’ checkmarks exist, so no choice but to remove legacy Blue in coming months.” The tweet was followed by the blue check scheme by subscription being made unavailable from Friday.
