- Twitter accidentally gives a gold verification badge to a fake Disney account that posts racial slurs.
- Elon Musk’s verification system on Twitter, which allows you to pay for verification badges, has generated chaos and controversy.
- Over the weekend, Twitter removed the legacy blue checkmarks, but within hours reset them for free for users with more than a million followers.
Complications with Twitter account verifications continue. As published by Variety this Monday, April 24, the company inadvertently granted a golden verification badge to a fake Disney account that publishes racial insults, without realizing it and due to the total absence of controls.
Twitter account @DisneyJuniorUK it sported a gold Twitter verification badge, accompanied by a message that read “This account is verified because it is an official business on Twitter.”
The account was suspended after the media attempted to contact Disney and Twitter about the issue.
The account, which by its content and number of followers does not appear to be an official Disney account, has posted racial and other tweets claiming that the adult animated series “South Park” and “Family Guy” would soon be available on Disney Junior UK. .
Twitter and account verification
Gold verification badges cost $1,000 a month, though Elon Musk’s network is charging nothing for longest-serving clients and most-followed brands.
The owner of the @DisneyJuniorUK account was “shocked” by his new verification status as 2,700 followers. He actually tweeted: “No way. That’s not true. Somebody pinch me.” he wrote next to a screenshot of the account’s profile page with the gold checkmark.
Both the account’s profile picture and banner used the same official Disney Junior logo as the actual Disney @DisneyJunior account, which also has a gold checkmark.
The real Disney Junior account has 50k followers, a description in the bio that reads “Where the magic begins!” and, next to your gold check mark, a small button that links you to the main @Disney account.
Elon Musk Changes
One of Elon Musk’s first changes after taking over Twitter after paying $40 billion in 2022 was to end the previous verification system, which saw celebrities, companies and other public figures award blue verification badges through of a system that many believed to be unfair.
However, the system that Musk devised, which is based on the fact that users to pay for blue verification badges, it became chaos.
One of the most notable cases involved a user who changed his name to the pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly. After paying $8 for the verification badge, he tweeted that insulin, which can cost patients hundreds of dollars for just a few weeks’ supply, would be free.
The prank, which was hailed for drawing attention to the price gouging of such a major drug, wiped billions off Eli Lilly’s stock price.
Months later, Musk announced that Twitter would introduce gold badges for businesses and gray badges for government accounts.
Last week, Twitter removed all blue checkmarks inherited from the old system, though this weekend it reinstated (unpaid) brands for users with more than a million followers.
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