It seems that Elon Musk is willing to turn its management Twitter in one of the biggest grotesque seen in the history of social networks, even surpassing the embarrassing image that the Metaverse has come to give. Shortly after radically changing the account verification mechanism, whose label is now obtained by simply making a payment, a significant number of accounts appeared impersonating well-known companies, people and characters like Nintendo America, Valve, LeBron James, Donald Trump and Jesus Christ.
By now we all know that Twitter verification was a mechanism that indicated that the person, company or organization behind the account was really that person and not another that was impersonating an identity or brand. Unfortunately, it seems that this became simply “account that has paid for Twitter Blue” or at least that is the impression given by seeing what has happened in the last few hours.
Fortunately, Twitter has taken action, but the screenshots are already circulating on the network and the reputational damage seems to be difficult to correct. In fact, the company has already come to the fore to say that it is “aggressively pursuing phishing and deception”, and it is better to act like this because this, which from the outside can be seen as a prank, has a real probability of leading to legal problems, especially if one takes into consideration that the origin is in a verification mechanism that has passed or at least it became little more than a joke. Despite the measures taken by the company, it seems that it is still possible to see accounts impersonating brands, personalities or people.
The impersonation issue could be corrected with some new tag that would allow authentic accounts to be identified, however, Elon Musk interceded to remove it a few hours after it was implemented. We will see if the company continues in its thirteen or if in the end it rectifies to introduce something that corrects the grotesque seen in the last hours, especially given the possibilities that the matter could lead to legal problems.
Ever since he took over Twitter after backing down from a legal dispute that he could have lost, Elon Musk has been like, “right or wrong, the important thing is that they talk about me.” He first fired the top managers; then to a large percentage of the squad, although it seems that here he has partially rectified; and finally we have the mess around the verification of the accounts.
We’re not currently putting an “Official” label on accounts but we are aggressively going after impersonation and deception.
—TwitterSupport (@TwitterSupport) November 9, 2022
All Musk’s lurching around his Twitter management looks like he’s going to destroy the social network in a while if he doesn’t rectify course, especially seeing that his decisions are already beginning to negatively affect users. Those who have begun to distrust can make the leap to Mastodon, a clone of Twitter published as free software and capable of working in a decentralized way (in fact it already does). It is true that at the moment it does not have as much activity as Twitter and that many companies and personalities are not yet there, but seeing Musk’s questionable decisions as the absolute boss of Twitter, probably more than one will consider opening an account in Mastodon as a precautionary measure .
