In the video game sphere, fraudulent "checkmarked" accounts appeared Wednesday night, including Nintendo of America showing Mario flipping the bird, Valve announcing Ricochet: Neon Prime, and a new trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI. In the world of sports, a fake Aroldis Chapman said he had re-signed with the Yankees, and a fake Adam Schefter reported that the Las Vegas Raiders coach had left the team.
Following sports transactions and news could become a total mess with the new verification system
Already fake LeBron and Aroldis Chapman tweets going around pic.twitter.com/vQgMqws1W0
— Joon Lee (@joonlee) November 9, 2022
Checkmarked accounts made fun of political figures from George Bush to Rudy Giuliani. A fake "free" Twitter Blue deal was advertised by a checkmarked that mimicked the real thing.
There are some ways to distinguish a fake checkmarked account from a verified one. If you click on the blue checkmark on the account profile, you'll see a message saying "This account is verified because it's notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category." If you look closely at the "Account created" date or account names like "@nintendoofus" and "@RockstarGamse", things can be given away.
These paid checkmark accounts could easily be seen as authentic by users who have been conditioned for years to more fully trust information from accounts with the checkmark next to their names. Many people who didn't pay attention were fooled.
One confused user wrote in response to the hoax Valve account, "Wait why the fuck does this have an official check mark?" Some of the hoaxtweets were re-posted by other people as if they were real.
AdvertisementSome of the fake accounts were only up for an hour or less, as reported by reports. Over the next few days, the absolute top priority is finding and suspending any verified bots.
On Sunday, after a host of previously verified accounts changed their names to "Elon Musk," the CEO wrote that he was targeting verified accounts that engage in "malicious deception" and that "any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying "parody" will be permanently suspended." In May, Musk said that permanent bans should be rare and reserved for accounts that are bots.
The wave of fake paid-checkmark accounts comes just a day after Musk said that he "killed" a separate "Official" tag that briefly appeared on many (but not all) Twitter accounts that had been previously verified for notability. "The official label is still going out as part of the @TwitterBlue launch—we are just focusing on government and commercial entities to begin with," Twitter executive Esther Crawford wrote shortly after that.Musk is making fun of some of the accounts that are trying to cause confusion over their purchased checkmarks. The beauty of this is that each account gets paid $8. Musk replied with a series of images including a target and a money bag. Musk responded with two crying-laughing emojis after another user complained about fake accounts.
Can't imagine why all the advertisers are pulling out of Twitter lmao pic.twitter.com/pg55WXkxhS
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) November 9, 2022
The presence of official-looking, checkmark-boasting hoax accounts will affect the positions of brands that are already showing hesitancy towards buying ads on the platform. "Can't imagine why all the advertisers are pulling out of the social networking site," said Schreier. Some are making fun of the fact that lost advertiser revenue could easily overwhelm any extra money brought in by Blue subscribers.
Musk said that there will be a lot of dumb things happening on the micro-blogging site. We will change what doesn't work.
You should go to discussion.
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