Elon Musk's Checkmarks Backfire Spectacularly When They're Immediately Used to Impersonate People

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If it isn't the consequences of what he's done.

Since taking over the company, Musk has made a lot of changes to the platform. The billionaire's new verification system, which gives anyone a blue verification checkmark if they're willing to pay $8 a month for the service, is backfiring spectacularly.

The new checkmark, which looks similar to the old one, has already been used by many users to impersonate high profile celebrities and politicians.

The platform has a lot of accounts that look like Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and other famous people.

It's exactly the kind of thing that will make advertisers think twice about spending money on the service.

"Can't imagine why all the advertisers are pulling out of social media," Schreier wrote, with a picture of a fake "Nintendo of America" account.

Musk is happy as the chaos ensues.

There are more serious long-term implications for the platform, and the spread of misinformation online as a whole, because of the silly impersonators taking over.

According to Rachel Tobac, a cybersecurity expert, the verification roll out is causing huge trust issues.

Allowing anyone to gain superficial credibility with a bought checkmark will only fuel the kind of scam Musk has promised to fight.

The individual users are being harassed.

Clicking the verification checkmark will show users that the account has been verified because it is notable in government, news, entertainment or another category.

It's questionable if any serious number of users will actually have the digital literacy to check an account's verification status before they reply or retweet.

It's only been over a week, but Musk has already shown himself to be a terrible custodian of the social media platform.

The next couple of weeks will be a lot of fun. Musk is applying a rapidly iterative engineering methodology which has paid off in big ways for his other ventures.

He's throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks.

Musk admitted on Wednesday that there will be a lot of dumb things happening on the social networking site. We will change what doesn't work.

The damage is being done. Musk's short-sighted actions could end up leaving a permanent mark as more people switch to other sources of information.

A fired employee unloaded on Musk's "clowntown" on the social networking site.