ETtech explainer: The real cost of Twitter’s blue-tick saga

In one of his first tweets as the new owner of Twitter, billionaire Elon Musk wrote, “Comedy is now legal on Twitter.” But the joke was on him after several users paid for verification badges to
impersonate companies and well-known personalities, including the world’s richest man himself, on the platform.

Musk recently unveiled a revamped subscription service, allowing any user to get the sought-after verification badge for $8 a month. Soon after,
users began abusing the programme by posing as companies and public personalities with blue-tick accounts.

Chaos ensues

Twitter’s new verification rules and the consequent mushrooming of fake ‘verified’ accounts has cost companies millions of dollars.

American pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly was one of the biggest victims of the fiasco. The company’s market cap was down over $15 billion after a fake account with a blue tick tweeted: “We are excited to announce insulin is free now”.

The pharma company was quick to respond from its official handle. “We apologise to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account. Our official Twitter account is @LillyPad,” it tweeted. However, the damage was done and nothing could be done to reverse it.

Similarly, aerospace defence firm Lockheed Martin lost a few billion in market cap after an impersonator tweeted the company would “halt weapon sales to countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel pending further investigation into their human rights records”. The company’s stock fell by over 5.5%.

Another account, posing as the official Coca-Cola handle, tweeted: “When you don’t consider diabetes, Coca-Cola makes for a healthy one.”

One account with a check mark, impersonating Musk’s electric car company Tesla, bragged about using child labour, while another pretended to be Nintendo of America, posting an image featuring the company’s video game character Mario making a rude hand gesture.

Shares of other companies, including Roblox and SpaceX, dropped briefly after screenshots of controversial tweets went viral on the social media platform.

Feature-istic mess


In his bid to end the ‘lords and peasants’ system of verification, the billionaire said the platform would offer a verification badge to anyone subscribing to Twitter Blue for $8 a month.

The check mark has long been a coveted symbol of authentication for celebrities, companies and politicians, among others. Earlier, it was offered for free and was bestowed only after the platform had verified the account holder’s identity. The new rules allowed anyone to get verified as long as they have $8 a month to spare.

The new paid verification feature was released just a week after Musk took charge and was unofficially suspended even more quickly as troublemakers began abusing it almost instantly.

Over
140,000 accounts had signed up for the new Twitter Blue as of Thursday, the New York Times reported, citing an internal Twitter log.

To crack down on impersonators, Twitter said accounts created on or after November 9 would be unable to subscribe to Twitter Blue. It was later suspended for all users.

Musk tweeted on November 10 that “too many corrupt legacy Blue ‘verification’ checkmarks exist, so no choice but to remove legacy Blue in coming months.”

The company also briefly prevented users from changing their display names on Twitter.

American rapper and singer Doja Cat, who changed her display name to Christmas, tweeted at Musk that she didn’t want her display name to remain Christmas forever and asked for help.

After Musk replied that she could change it, Doja Cat thanked him and renamed herself “Elon Musk”. At the time of writing this, her Twitter display name is “fart.”

Official unofficial?


With ‘verified’ users running amok on Twitter, the platform said on Thursday it would add an “Official” label to some accounts to “combat impersonation.” Hours later, Musk said he “killed it”.

“Blue check will be the great leveller,” he added.

The ‘Official’ tag was back again on Friday but only for certain accounts. “To combat impersonation, we’ve added an ‘Official’ label to some accounts,” Twitter’s support account, which has the “official” tag, tweeted on Friday.

In his defence, the 51-year-old billionaire said, “Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works and change what doesn’t.”

Musk also went on to Tweet that parody accounts “must include ‘parody’ in their name, not just in bio”, adding that Twitter would add its own ‘parody’ subscript to such accounts.

Twitter, which has about 240 million users worldwide, has spiralled into chaos since Musk’s takeover. Concerns are being raised about the credibility of information shared on the platform, with several fraudsters posing as official accounts, complete with verified badges. While it all seems like fun and games now, such impersonation could have serious consequences, many experts have warned.