What is a Validation Bad? Significance and Implications of the Delay in Twitter for the Blue Check System and the Violation of Vine

But for a huge portion of individual Twitter accounts, the badge’s value seems more nebulous. Many of the government agencies are already strapped for cash, and if you are a police officer, you likely won’t keep a verification badge because you don’t want to be mistaken for a troll. Many celebrities may simply gravitate toward platforms like Instagram, where they can get verified for free. There is a good chance that paid verification will be seen as small potatoes compared to their core advertising and revenue sharing businesses.

The decision to delay the rollout comes as the entire decision to charge users for verification has faced wide public backlash. Some celebrities on the platform posed as Musk over the weekend and showed a potential flaw in the Blue Check system.

Musk has moved quickly to shake up Twitter, including by firing its top execs. In tweets over the weekend, Musk polled his followers about whether to bring back Vine, Twitter’s defunct short-form video service, and said “absolutely” in response to a user’s suggestion to rethink the platform’s character limits. It is not clear if Musk is committed to any of these changes.

Newswire, Nose, and Chaos on Twitter: The Case of the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CdCdP)

Verification was a way for prominent people and organizations to make sure they are comfortable on the platform. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is one of the early verified accounts. The media has always loved verification. For journalists trying to get sources to talk or audience development teams trying to get eyes on a story, it makes sense to want a verified account; it made you look like a person somebody had vetted. Blue checks assured a journalist’s followers that the story they shared was from the paper and not a hoax.

The trolling activity comes in the wake of Musk purchasing the company and pledging to restore the accounts of users who were previously banned from the platform, most notably former President Donald Trump. Musk has also said he will limit the company’s content restrictions and require the paid subscription for account verification.

Every social network produces a unique posting style, and Twitter’s design incentivizes something slightly paradoxical: it’s one part newswire, one part nonsense. On one hand, Twitter is like a next-generation Bloomberg terminal where journalists post scoops and live coverage before it hits their websites and where politicians, businesses, and government agencies make official announcements about anything from customer service complaints to hurricane alerts. On the other side, there are a lot of parody accounts, such as the Gorilla Channel tweet, and horse_ebooks. The first category benefits from Twitter’s default-public feed and rapid-fire text-snippet format — the second from how easily you can create accounts that aren’t tied to a real name or face and fire off bizarre jokes or hot takes.

At their best, these two Twitter styles are complementary. The inherent seriousness of Newswire Twitter heightens the humor and absurdity of Nonsense Twitter, and the style of Nonsense Twitter bleeds into Newswire Twitter, doing things like turning government consumer protection agencies into memelords. There’s even room for the occasional dose of chaos, like DPRK News: the fake North Korean propaganda feed that’s fooled several news outlets, including The Verge.

The Blue Check Rapture is Coming: Why Facebook and TikTok Cribbed the Blue Check for their Twitter and Facebook Networks isn’t

It may sound like an argument for Musk’s new plan. If you work for an organization such as Mcdonald’s or the Associated Press, then $240 a year is not worth it in terms of preserving a sense of trust.

The proposed shakeup was not well received by users of the micro-blogging site. Author Stephen King, for instance, tweeted that he would be “gone like Enron” rather than pay to be verified. Musk appears to be undeterred. The Blue Check Rapture is coming.

The blue check system wasn’t a cure-all for fraud, lies, and other misinformation—Twitter’s long history of content moderation problems is well documented, plus it made a number of missteps deciding who and why to verify over the years—but verification did help the platform operate as a “town square” for sharing information. There’s a reason why every other major social platform, including Facebook and TikTok, cribbed the blue badges for their own networks. They have been at least moderately helpful.

The decision to push back the new feature comes one day after the platform launched an updated version of its iOS app that promises to allow users who pay a monthly subscription fee to get a blue checkmark on their profiles, a feature that CEO Elon Musk has proposed as a way to fight spam on the platform.

Twitter Blue is Not a Cybercrime: Sarah Silverman’s Account Was Suspended after a Social Media Controversy

Sarah Silverman trolled Musk with her verified account, using his picture, cover image and name. The only thing distinguishing a tweet coming Silverman’s account was the @SarahKSilverman handle.

I am a freedom of speech sceptic. I eat doody for breakfast all the time. Her account supports Democratic candidates.

The account was temporarily restricted on Sunday with a warning that there had been “some unusual activity” shown to visitors before they could click on the profile. The comedian then changed her account back to its usual form, complete with her own name and image.

The blue checkmark means your identity was verified, and the actress changed her account name to the CEO’s. Scammers would have a harder time impersonating you. It doesn’t apply anymore. Good luck out there!” She then answered a follower who asked how the checkmark no longer applies, writing, “[y]ou can buy a blue check mark for $7.99 a month without verifying who you are.”

After changing her profile name to Musk, Bertinelli tweeted and retweeted support for several Democratic candidates and hashtags, including “VoteBlueForDemocracy” and “#VoteBlueIn2022.”

Musk said that before being suspended, users would no longer receive warning. “This will be clearly identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue,” he tweeted.

In recent months, Musk has shared conspiracy theories about the attack on Paul Pelosi, called Democrats the party of “division & hate,” compared Twitter’s former CEO to Joseph Stalin and warned that “the woke mind virus will destroy civilization.”

At the end of August, Sean Murphy was trying to book a flight between Nairobi, Kenya, and Entebbe, Uganda, with Kenya Airways. “The information on the booking page was ambiguous,” says Murphy, the cofounder of Web3 company ImpactScope. He messaged the verified account of the airline on the social network asking if there was baggage allowance for the flight. A day later, when the account didn’t reply, he sent the company a public tweet reminding it about the question. The replies began.

With no real way to check identities, cybercriminals can easily use social media as a way to target unbeknown victims, and that’s where the path to impersonated accounts can be found.