Out of everything that came out of Elon Musk’s brain as the new Twitter Chief, this has to be the most concerning. Right now, anyone can essentially buy a “Blue Checkmark,” opening a new door for scammers and other malignant actors to boost their agendas on the app. Twitter responds that any such accounts will be suspended once detected, while also hinting at new measures to confirm identities during the Twitter Blue sign-up process.
Profiling Bots?
Twitter doesn’t quite have a real checking process in place just yet, instead relying on what it calls ‘Payment Verification’, since bots, technically, won’t be able to pay, hence, not be able to get over to Twitter Blue. However, that hasn’t proven to be a viable deterrent just yet.
Over the last few months, Twitter Blue-subscribed profiles have been identified as using AI-generated profile images, and have been approved for the program despite being ‘non-human’ entities. Twitter user @conspirator0 shared a couple of examples, which appear as active Twitter Blue subscribers in the app.
“Many of [the bot accounts], according to conspirator0’s findings, ‘push specific political agendas’, both left and right-leaning — though mostly the latter. One account, under the now suspended handle of cortez_santiage, described themselves as a ‘nationalist’, a ‘paleo-conservative’, ‘anti-liberal’, and ‘anti-cringe’. Another campaigned to share so-called evidence of ‘the genocide of whites in America’.”
So while Twitter has seemingly pledged to re-add manual checking for all Twitter Blue applicants, it’s likely that it won’t happen, which has opened the door for potential manipulation within Twitter’s new checkmark process. However, without the checks in place, it’s still problematic – Twitter’s extra badges and whatnot, which were meant to counter impersonations, are also looking rather cluttered and confusing.
Twitter’s currently expanding company badges to all approved staff of approved companies, including a new description panel that verifies why users have a blue checkmark. That should reduce the amount of impersonation happening in the app. Twitter’s also working on a new indicator to show when a profile has confirmed its ID through its system, which should be an approval requirement for a blue tick, but isn’t.
The Wrap
Essentially, the updated verification system, which Musk lauded as the ‘Great Leveler’ is predominantly a huge mess. It’s unlikely to generate the extra revenue needed for Twitter to finally get out of the critical zone. Still, if anything, Musk is persistent, or maybe just really stubborn? Either way, they’re pushing through with the plan, so it should be interesting to once again sit back and watch the potential chaos unfold.
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