The parody accounts were proliferating on
Twitter.
After
Elon Musk,
Twitter’s new owner, revamped a subscription service to give users a coveted
verification check mark for $8 a month, users began abusing the program last
week. Twitter accounts with check marks posed as companies like Eli Lilly and
PepsiCo, sending spoof messages about free insulin and the superiority of
Coca-Cola. One account with a check mark pretended to be Tesla, Musk’s electric
car company, and bragged about using child labor.
اضافة اعلان
Eventually, the
disorder on Twitter seemed to become too much for Musk.
“We need to
urgently roll out official labels for big advertisers due to impersonation,” a
Twitter engineering manager wrote in an internal message seen by The New York
Times. “Request is from Elon.”
Twitter, the
so-called global town square, with about 240 million users, has descended in
recent days into a messy swirl of accounts pretending to be high-profile brands
and sending disruptive tweets. While Twitter has long contended with falsehoods
and toxic speech, some users are exploiting the changes made by Musk — who took
over the service last month in a $44 billion buyout — to gleefully sow chaos.
The
impersonation and pranking could have serious consequences. Graham Brookie, a
director at the
Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which studies
online misinformation, said the quality of information and the credibility of
content on Twitter could suffer if fraudsters created confusion and amplified
lies. People might get check marks on their accounts and spread falsehoods just
to make a buck, he added.
“Selling the
truth is dangerous and unacceptable,” Senator Edward Markey wrote in a letter
to Musk on November 11 after a Washington Post reporter posed as the politician
with a check mark on Twitter to show how easy it was. “Twitter must explain how
this happened and how it will prevent it from happening again.”
On November 10,
Twitter Blue, the subscription service that people pay for to obtain a check
mark, appeared to be paused. The check mark has long been a powerful symbol of
authentication for celebrities, companies, and politicians. It was previously
free and was bestowed only after Twitter had verified the identity of the
account holder.
Musk and Twitter
did not comment on the status of Twitter Blue. But the 51-year-old billionaire
appeared unrepentant about his changes and the activity on the platform. He
said in a tweet on November 11 that Twitter “hit all-time high of active users
today”.
The disarray was
the just one fallout following Musk’s ownership of Twitter. Since completing
his takeover, Musk has laid off about half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, told
brands that he would engage in a “thermonuclear name&shame” if they cut off
their advertising, and warned that the company was doing so badly that its cash
flow was negative and that it could be on the verge of bankruptcy. Employees,
he said, need to be more “hardcore”.
One of Musk’s
solutions is to push for more subscription revenue, including charging $8 a
month for Twitter Blue and letting those who pay get the check mark. The
service, which is available only in the United States, Canada, Australia, and
New Zealand, was rolled out early this month, but without features including
the check marks. After deliberation about the spread of political misinformation,
the company paused the debut of the check marks until after the US midterm
elections.
Musk also
appeared cognizant of the dangers of impersonation on the service.
“Going forward,
any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying
‘parody’ will be permanently suspended,” he tweeted after some Twitter users,
including comedian Kathy Griffin, changed their profile photos and display
names to mimic his account. Griffin was later suspended from Twitter.
On November 9,
accounts that had paid for the new Twitter Blue — among them parody accounts,
conspiracy theorists, and white nationalists, according to Media Matters for
America — started to get their check marks. Some accounts soon ran amok.
One impostor
account with a check mark masqueraded as Eli Lilly, tweeting that the
pharmaceutical company would provide free insulin to its customers. Eli Lilly’s
stock tumbled more than 5 percent in trading the next day and was still down
more than 4 percent at the close of trading for that day.
Another account
with a check mark pretended to be Nintendo of America, sending a tweet
featuring the video game company’s Mario character making a rude hand gesture.
Targets of the
pranksters rushed to disavow the bogus statements. A spokesperson for Eli Lilly
said in a statement that the company was working to correct the situation. A
spokesperson for Nintendo had no immediate comment.
The confusion
soon became too much for Twitter. Shortly before midnight on November 10, the
company said it would append an “Official” label to some accounts to “combat
impersonation”. Less than 48 hours earlier, the company had said it would not
add such a label.
And the next
day, Musk tweeted that a “Parody” subscript would be added to accounts doing
parody impersonations.
An internal
Twitter log seen by the
New York Times showed that more than 140,000 accounts
had signed up for the new Twitter Blue as of November 10.
In one of his
earliest tweets as the new boss, Musk wrote, “Comedy is now legal on Twitter.”
But the Twitter pranksters did not draw laughs from many brands.
“The immediate future on
this platform, which essentially is the news cycle, is pretty bleak from a
disinformation standpoint,” Brookie said.
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