In the video game realm, fake “checkmark” accounts that appeared Wednesday night included Nintendo of America purportedly showing Mario flipping the bird, Valve purportedly announcing Ricochet: Neon Prime, and Rockstar Games purportedly announces a new trailer date for Grand Theft Auto VI. In the world of sports, a fake Lebron James claimed he was asking for a trade, a fake Aroldis Chapman said he had re-signed with the Yankees, and a fake version of ESPN’s Adam Schefter “reported” the supposed departure of the Las Vegas Raiders. coach Josh McDaniels. After sports trading and news it could become an absolute mess with the new verification system Already fake tweets of LeBron and Aroldis Chapman are circulating pic.twitter.com/vQgMqws1W0 — Joon Lee (@joonlee) November 9, 2022 Checkmarked accounts also gleefully impersonated political figures, from Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to former British MP Tony Blair and former US president George W. Bush. One bold scammer even impersonated Twitter itself, advertising a fake “free” Twitter Blue deal for cryptocurrency/NFT owners who “authenticate their wallet assets.”

Environment collapse

For careful Twitter users, there are some ways to distinguish these fake checkmark accounts from previously verified accounts (which didn’t pay for their checkmark using Twitter Blue). Going to an account profile and clicking on the blue checkmark itself brings up a tooltip that says either “This account is verified because it’s registered with Twitter Blue” or “This account is verified because it’s notable in government, news, entertainment or other specified category.” In some cases, looking closely at the “Account Created” date or account names like “@nintendoofus” and “@RockstarGamse” will tell you. However, at a quick glance, these paid checkmark accounts could easily appear authentic to errant Twitter users, who have been forced for years to more fully trust information from accounts with a checkmark next to their name. And many who did not pay much attention were at least temporarily deceived by the scammers. “RICOCHET RETURNS?? Wait why the hell does that have an official check mark?” A confused user wrote in response to the Valve hoax account. Many others retweeted screenshots of some of the hoax tweets as if they were real. Advertising
All of the fake accounts listed above (a far from exhaustive list) are currently suspended for “violating Twitter’s rules,” and some have only been open for an hour or less, according to reports. In an email obtained by Bloomberg from Twitter late Wednesday, Musk said that “over the next few days, the absolute top priority is finding and stopping any verified bots/trolls/spam.” On Sunday, after a number of previously verified accounts began changing their names to “Elon Musk,” Twitter’s chief executive wrote that he was targeting verified accounts that engaged in “malicious deception” and that “any Twitter handling impersonation without clearly specifying “the parody will be permanently suspended”. This was at least partially at odds with a statement in May, where Musk said that “permanent bans should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots or spam.” The spate of fake paid accounts comes just a day after Musk said he had “killed” a separate “Official” tag that briefly appeared on many (but not all) Twitter accounts previously verified for notable presence. “The official label is still rolling out as part of the @TwitterBlue rollout — initially we’re focusing on government and commercial entities,” Twitter executive Esther Crawford wrote shortly afterward.

I’m actually laughing

Publicly, at least, Musk expresses amusement at many of the accounts that seek to sow confusion about the tickers they’ve bought. When a user pointed out that “[t]The beauty of this is every account that is verified and paid $8. Twitter is holding the money and suspending the account,” Musk responded with a series of emojis, including a target and a bag of money. In response to another user who apparently complained about fake accounts with purchased checkmarks, Musk just replied with two laughing emojis. I can’t imagine why all the advertisers are pulling out of Twitter pic.twitter.com/pg55WXkxhS — Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) November 9, 2022 But many Twitter watchers wonder how the presence of official-looking, checkered hoax accounts — even those that are quickly taken down — will affect the positions of brands that already show reluctance to buy ads on the platform. “I can’t imagine why all the advertisers are leaving Twitter,” Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier sardonically tweeted in response to Nintendo’s fake account. Others joke about how the lost revenue from advertisers could easily outweigh any additional money received from Blue subscribers buying blue checkmarks. “Please note that Twitter will be doing a lot of dumb things in the coming months,” Musk tweeted on Wednesday. “We’ll keep what works and change what doesn’t.” Go to the discussion… Listing image by @nintendoofus/Twitter