Twitter Verified Accounts
From the WaPo
Twitter has been selling blue check marks to any account for $8, including our test imposter accounts for Blaire Erskine and Sen. Ed Markey. That makes it mostly worthless.
There are now two Blaire Erskines on Twitter. One is a popular comedian with a photo of a cat and a check mark next to her name saying she is “verified.”
The other Blaire Erskine has a photo of a cat and a check mark saying she’s “verified.” But this one is actually me.
I wanted to understand what a blue check mark actually means in Musk’s new Twitter — and what we the users are getting for our money. So I asked Erskine if I could impersonate her on Twitter, and she agreed. My faux Blaire took about 15 minutes to set up with a blue check mark — and showed me Twitter “verification” doesn’t verify much of anything at all. A blue check mark no longer means somebody is who they say they are — and that makes Twitter a much less reliable source of information.
Then I did my test again with the permission of a U.S. senator, Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). In a few minutes, I got a blue check mark on an impersonation of the lawmaker, who has for years scrutinized tech giants in the Senate.
Twitter has said accounts that impersonate people are not allowed and face suspension when they’re discovered. It booted comedian Kathy Griffin after she changed her Twitter screen name to Elon Musk. But there’s very little about Twitter’s new paid service that stops you from verifying a fake account. As of the time I published this column, its systems hadn’t detected these were not authentic accounts and they remained online.
Both the real Sen. Edward J. Markey Twitter account, on left, and our test impostor one, on right, have blue check marks. When you tap on the icon on the web version of Twitter, different explanations of the icon appear.
To create them, I only needed three things: a spare iPhone, a credit card and a little creativity. For my faux Erskine, I set up a Twitter account that replaces the lowercase L in her first name with an uppercase I — like @bIaireerskine — which look nearly identical on Twitter’s website. For Markey, who has two legitimate Twitter accounts, I set him up as @realEdMarkey.
This matters even for non-famous Twitter users because the social network used to be a place everyone could turn for authentic information. Twitter’s legacy verification system — in which the company checked who really owned an account — was opaque and turned blue check marks into symbols of elitism in the eyes of some. But it meant when a celebrity, official or company tweeted, you knew it was probably them. That’s why Twitter became the internet’s default place to launch things and make apologies.
Twitter’s new system for granting blue check marks has begun creating chaos and undermining the truth. A fake but blue-check account for pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly got thousands of retweets for saying, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.” (It is not.) A fake version of influential ESPN reporter Adam Schefter erroneously tweeted that the Las Vegas Raiders had a new head coach. There was a fake Donald Trump, Pope Francis, LeBron James and many more.
Twitter didn’t reply to a request for comment.
If you’re confused, I don’t blame you. So far, Twitter hasn’t informed users — other than those following Musk’s stream-of-tweet product development — that the meaning of a blue check mark has changed. That’s partly because Musk himself appears to keep changing his mind about what it means, particularly for public figures and legacy verified accounts. In a matter of days, he’s variously suggested notable and official accounts will keep their blue check marks and that they’ll be swapped for gray check marks. On Thursday morning, Musk tweeted that all legacy blue check marks will have to be removed in the months ahead because too many are “corrupt.”
(To help you keep track, The Washington Post’s Help Desk will continue updating this FAQ on what Twitter’s blue check marks mean as the situation evolves.)
There also appears to be a blue-check mark bug in Twitter’s iPhone app: On both of my test accounts, a pop-up said they were verified because they were notable people, not because I had paid for Twitter Blue.
This kind of chaos is par for the course at Musk’s companies, where he frequently makes pronouncements he doesn’t deliver on. But in this case, he’s messing with the very systems that our enemies use to undermine American democracy, business and life.
“As a critical 21st century communication tool and ‘global town square,’ Twitter and its leadership have a responsibility to the public to ensure the platform doesn’t become a breeding ground for manipulation and deceit,” Markey said in a statement. “Safeguards like blue check marks have provided context for users to be smart, critical consumers of news and information. Now, Elon Musk is putting truth on sale for $8.”
Twitter’s content moderation head quits as departures alarm the FTC
Why is this happening? Musk took on billions in debt to buy Twitter and needs to find a way to crank up the cash flow that he’s not getting from advertisers alone. Apparently, he thinks selling check marks is his best bet.
During a Twitter Spaces event with advertisers on Wednesday, Musk described the change as “a leveling of the playing field” and an end to Twitter’s “lords and peasants” system.
Twitter has been selling blue check marks to any account for $8, including our test imposter accounts for Blaire Erskine and Sen. Ed Markey. That makes it mostly worthless.
There are now two Blaire Erskines on Twitter. One is a popular comedian with a photo of a cat and a check mark next to her name saying she is “verified.”
The other Blaire Erskine has a photo of a cat and a check mark saying she’s “verified.” But this one is actually me.
I wanted to understand what a blue check mark actually means in Musk’s new Twitter — and what we the users are getting for our money. So I asked Erskine if I could impersonate her on Twitter, and she agreed. My faux Blaire took about 15 minutes to set up with a blue check mark — and showed me Twitter “verification” doesn’t verify much of anything at all. A blue check mark no longer means somebody is who they say they are — and that makes Twitter a much less reliable source of information.
Then I did my test again with the permission of a U.S. senator, Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). In a few minutes, I got a blue check mark on an impersonation of the lawmaker, who has for years scrutinized tech giants in the Senate.
Twitter has said accounts that impersonate people are not allowed and face suspension when they’re discovered. It booted comedian Kathy Griffin after she changed her Twitter screen name to Elon Musk. But there’s very little about Twitter’s new paid service that stops you from verifying a fake account. As of the time I published this column, its systems hadn’t detected these were not authentic accounts and they remained online.
Both the real Sen. Edward J. Markey Twitter account, on left, and our test impostor one, on right, have blue check marks. When you tap on the icon on the web version of Twitter, different explanations of the icon appear.
To create them, I only needed three things: a spare iPhone, a credit card and a little creativity. For my faux Erskine, I set up a Twitter account that replaces the lowercase L in her first name with an uppercase I — like @bIaireerskine — which look nearly identical on Twitter’s website. For Markey, who has two legitimate Twitter accounts, I set him up as @realEdMarkey.
This matters even for non-famous Twitter users because the social network used to be a place everyone could turn for authentic information. Twitter’s legacy verification system — in which the company checked who really owned an account — was opaque and turned blue check marks into symbols of elitism in the eyes of some. But it meant when a celebrity, official or company tweeted, you knew it was probably them. That’s why Twitter became the internet’s default place to launch things and make apologies.
Twitter’s new system for granting blue check marks has begun creating chaos and undermining the truth. A fake but blue-check account for pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly got thousands of retweets for saying, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.” (It is not.) A fake version of influential ESPN reporter Adam Schefter erroneously tweeted that the Las Vegas Raiders had a new head coach. There was a fake Donald Trump, Pope Francis, LeBron James and many more.
Twitter didn’t reply to a request for comment.
If you’re confused, I don’t blame you. So far, Twitter hasn’t informed users — other than those following Musk’s stream-of-tweet product development — that the meaning of a blue check mark has changed. That’s partly because Musk himself appears to keep changing his mind about what it means, particularly for public figures and legacy verified accounts. In a matter of days, he’s variously suggested notable and official accounts will keep their blue check marks and that they’ll be swapped for gray check marks. On Thursday morning, Musk tweeted that all legacy blue check marks will have to be removed in the months ahead because too many are “corrupt.”
(To help you keep track, The Washington Post’s Help Desk will continue updating this FAQ on what Twitter’s blue check marks mean as the situation evolves.)
There also appears to be a blue-check mark bug in Twitter’s iPhone app: On both of my test accounts, a pop-up said they were verified because they were notable people, not because I had paid for Twitter Blue.
This kind of chaos is par for the course at Musk’s companies, where he frequently makes pronouncements he doesn’t deliver on. But in this case, he’s messing with the very systems that our enemies use to undermine American democracy, business and life.
“As a critical 21st century communication tool and ‘global town square,’ Twitter and its leadership have a responsibility to the public to ensure the platform doesn’t become a breeding ground for manipulation and deceit,” Markey said in a statement. “Safeguards like blue check marks have provided context for users to be smart, critical consumers of news and information. Now, Elon Musk is putting truth on sale for $8.”
Twitter’s content moderation head quits as departures alarm the FTC
Why is this happening? Musk took on billions in debt to buy Twitter and needs to find a way to crank up the cash flow that he’s not getting from advertisers alone. Apparently, he thinks selling check marks is his best bet.
During a Twitter Spaces event with advertisers on Wednesday, Musk described the change as “a leveling of the playing field” and an end to Twitter’s “lords and peasants” system.
