Twitter Verification Disaster Allows Fake Nintendo and Valve News

The latest it seems An endless list of dire consequences For Twitter users on the heels of buying Elon Musk is very much to be expected: after Site verification system fix A flood of fake accounts – which are still “verified” – have started using the platform to fuck people.

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Previously, a “verified” Twitter account had a little blue check mark next to its name, meaning that the person tweeting from that account was the one you’d expect. This is what “verified” means in most contexts. However, under Musk’s new Twitter Blue subscription system, anyone can pay him $8 per month also “Verified,” just because they pay, so the internet-wide shortcut to a trusted account — you’ll find blue ticks everywhere from Instagram to Depop — is now almost worthless on Twitter.

Here are some examples from earlier today. The first is this account claiming to be Valve Software, tweeting about a new “competitive platform”. It’s not Valve, of course – the account name is actually valvesotfware, and Valve would never use the word “enthusiast” in any version – but there’s a big blue tick next to its name, which means a lot of people trust it’s legit and believe it.

The second is a fake Nintendo account. Again, not so In fact Nintendo, but there’s a blue tick next to its name, which for most people who aren’t online and following every development in this silly story might suggest it is.

(Note that while this is clearly a silly tweet, one of the previous tweets from the same now suspended account was trying to announce that Super Mario Galaxy is coming to Switch)

If you are Using Twitter for video game news And you want to stay safe out there, a good tip – if it’s also a problem – is that you can look into your checking account status and see what Good heart From the verification they received. By going to the account profile and clicking/clicking the blue tick, you will see a prompt saying either the owner has paid $8 for their status, or whether it is an actual verified person/company.

While the fake Nintendo account is here tweeting like a 13-year-old, the fake Valve account followed this bogus ad with a statement that they had reason to lie, saying in protest:

Twitter Blue is a problem, it’s easy to spread misinformation and the harm it can do to people can have a much greater impact than a fake game ad. You now own a huge platform and this is what you choose to do with it, do better. Tweet embed

Science! While the video game accounts here (and no doubt countless others have appeared as I write) have been messing about with some pretty innocent things—Something that sports fans do too– It’s now easier to impersonate a news outlet, politician or activist and do a few things truly ruin.

In these cases, the advice is the same as those gaming accounts (or any Twitter account); Check the check to make sure the account is actually validated, and….gosh, I feel so stupid that I had to write that.