Twitter’s rapid unscheduled disassembly
Friday, Apr 21, 2023 - Posted by Isabel Miller
* NBC…
As Twitter began removing legacy verification badges Thursday, impersonators quickly took advantage of the situation by creating parody accounts for public figures, including celebrities and politicians.
After their real accounts lost their blue check marks, impersonator accounts quickly emerged for users such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, the City of New York, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and former Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio. […]
Programmer Travis Brown tweeted that only 28 legacy verified accounts got new Twitter Blue verification following Thursday’s purge. Brown said his findings are based off data pulled from the company’s API, which offers developers access to the platform’s data.
28?
* Fake “official” accounts are popping up in Illinois and elsewhere…
…Adding… WGN…
“We are aware of the fake Twitter accounts, and our team is working with Twitter to resolve this matter,” tweeted mayoral spokesperson Ryan Johnson. “Users can verify official City accounts by visiting: chi.gov/social”
The fake Lightfoot account has been removed however the fake CDOT account remains active as of Friday at 12:30pm.
* Bloomberg…
Pope Francis lost his checkmark, as did Donald Trump and Christiano Ronaldo. Meanwhile, LeBron James still had a blue check by his name even though the athlete previously said he wouldn’t pay for a subscription.
“My Twitter account says I’ve subscribed to Twitter Blue. I haven’t,” the author Stephen King tweeted.
Musk said he was “paying for a few personally,” including King, James, and Star Trek actor William Shatner. […]
It wasn’t just celebrities who were bewildered. Twitter also scrapped labels describing news organizations as government-funded or state-affiliated after weeks of sparring between them.
These labels that had been added to accounts — including the British Broadcasting Corp., National Public Radio in the US, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. as well as accounts affiliated with China state-backed broadcaster CGTN among others — were deleted as of Friday morning.
* Vice…
A fake account subscribed to Twitter Blue claiming to represent the paramilitary group fighting for control of Sudan has falsely claimed its leader has died in the fighting.
After Elon Musk’s Twitter removed legacy blue ticks, the tweet from the fake @RSFSudann account claiming to represent the Rapid Support Forces does have a verified blue tick, but the actual RSF account, @RSFSudan, does not.
The fake tweet wrongly claimed that RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, otherwise known as Hemedti, had died from injuries sustained in combat. […]
While many of the quote tweets and replies were in response to it being fake, many took the tweet’s false information at face value.
Contacted for a response, Twitter’s press department responded with a poop emoji.
* Rich has had some takes as well…
* And then there’s this from Mashable…
Dozens of regional LGBTQ community centers are deactivating their Twitter accounts today, decrying recent policy changes despite the rise of hate speech and calling on the app to do more to protect its users.
The announcement came from CenterLink, an international nonprofit network of more than 325 LGBTQ organizations, many of which will also be leaving the platform.
“Twitter has become increasingly unsafe in recent months for LGBTQ and BIPOC people with anti-LGBTQ, anti-trans, anti-Black, and antisemitic tweets on the rise. The removal of this policy was the last straw,” Denise Spivak, CEO of CenterLink, told Mashable. […]
Twitter has seen an exodus of users, verified accounts, and advertisers since Musk’s purchase. While many see the app’s changes as the end to a fun social ecosystem, others are more worried about the implications Musk’s policies have on users with disabilities, LGBTQ users and users of color, the spread of accurate information, and the ability for organizations doing important work to stay connected to communities online.
- Just Me 2 - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 1:15 pm:
The destruction of Twitter by a madman who is perfectly happy to lose money if it helps his political bias is unfortunate. The future of news sharing will be topic-specific blogs and platforms, very similar to this one.
Imagine a MLB-version of CapitolFax.com for example.
- Roadrager - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 1:19 pm:
==Musk said he was “paying for a few personally,” including King, James, and Star Trek actor William Shatner.==
These are some of the most prominent celebrities to say they had no intent to pay for the little blue check, so Elon gave it to them for free for… vengeance? Because people get made fun of for paying for the checkmark, but also that’s the website’s primary revenue stream? Someone help me out here, I am not a billionaire business genius.
==More worried about fake emergency service accounts, frankly. You could see some clowns trying to create havoc during a tornado, for instance.==
This has been a problem for years and years on Facebook, where faux meteorologists exaggerate or fabricate potential severe weather events for clout. Giving that gang carte blanche on what is well established as the site for immediate breaking news is deeply dangerous.
- ChicagoVinny - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 1:28 pm:
He’s trying to charge enterprise anywhere from $500k - $2.5 million a year to use the Twitter API.
Microsoft has been removing Twitter integration from a lot of their services.
Twitter has always been the runt of the social media litter and increasingly not worth the headache for orgs.
- Sue - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 1:32 pm:
Every former public shareholder of Twitter should be eternally grateful to Elon Musk. On a whim he opted to by a company worth at most $20 a share but paid the public shareholders $54. The company was imploding in value before musk showed up.
- Parody within a parody - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 1:33 pm:
This is deeply disturbing and that’s coming from someone who once ran a parody Twitter account for a local radio celeb. My account was so crazy you had to be dumb to believe it was the person I said it was though an alderman did and asked to come on the morning show once.
I was clear in my absurdity that it was a parody and I didn’t want people to think it was the real person. But there are people out there more mischievous than I guess I was who have more sinister motives.
- Steve - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 1:45 pm:
If you can’t rely on Twitter (because you don’t want to pay $8 bucks a month), you can’t rely on Twitter if you are a government agency. $8 bucks a month is much lower than what many government bureaus are asking for. Most places have websites, so there’s that.
- TheInvisibleMan - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 1:46 pm:
The National Weather Service posted earlier this week that they lost access to the API.
This means they can no longer tweet out automated warnings during rapidly changing weather conditions - tornadoes warnings, for example.
They warned their followers, but someone will have missed that.
Destroying the secondary content value that kept people using your service was a poor decision.
- New Day - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 1:57 pm:
Maybe the fake CDOT account can do a better job coordinating construction projects on Chicago’s North side (Kennedy and LSD at the same time) than the real CDOT.
Seriously though, what a cluster of Elon’s own making. Rich, real nice headline…
- 47th Ward - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 2:05 pm:
I’m totally stealing the Pope’s Twitter account. Imagine being infallible on social media.
- ANNON'IN - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 2:10 pm:
Can you let us know when to care…like right before Butternut Hut runs out of Bud Select
- Michelle Flaherty - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 2:20 pm:
Dealing with Twitter right now reminds me of dealing with the Blagojevich administration, especially second term, near the end Blago administration.
- Oswego Willy - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 2:47 pm:
I find Twitter useful only to where and what I’m specifically looking for, by very specific users.
It’s rare to search on that thing and find a newly useful handle.
That said, it’s a slo-mo implosion… it’d be biblically miraculous if it turned itself around.
- Cubs Win - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 2:55 pm:
Here’s a not-too-serious 2012 Chicago-related reminder (a “leaked” Lolla schedule) as to why — maybe — we shouldn’t look to Twitter and other forms of social media for our news:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/leorgalil/2012/03/21/the-man-behind-lolla-leaks-speaks/?sh=51333d9e596c
I’m regularly amazed by intelligent, hard-working people I know who offer up some bit of “news” they recently learned about via social media. It doesn’t matter how out-there it might sound because if they’ve read it, they sincerely believe it must be true.
- Lurker - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 3:11 pm:
I’ve been trying to find out who is still advertising on Twitter but accurate info on the names of the companies is hard to find. I’d love to do at least a soft boycott of them.
- Jerry - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 3:16 pm:
Another reason not to use any of those services (tweedlee, bookface, grammy instant).
- SAP - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 3:21 pm:
And that guy wants you to buy his cars and ride on his rocket ships.
- Levois - Friday, Apr 21, 23 @ 3:27 pm:
Yeah, some havoc has been going on when he announced the whole Twitter Blue verification thing. Some things needed to be worked out and it seems still does need to be worked out!