In an ironic twist in the ongoing Twitter/Elon Musk saga, the new Twitter owner shared that he was getting rid of those legacy blue checkmarks, basically forgetting the reason they were there in the first place and opening the site up to a wave of new lawsuits.
Musk has been adding and subtracting features the same way kids trade Pokémon cards, but let’s not forget the reason verification is so important: so that people won’t create fake accounts impersonating important people or companies.
One person tweeted at Musk and why she lost her previous verification badge when she signed up for Blue. Musk said it was because of the proliferation of corrupt accounts.
Someone else commented that Elon’s move would leave to a “scam nightmare.” He answered that comment by saying “$8.”
The blue check was started strictly to deal with this problem. Twitter was only a few years old when it was sued in 2009 by then St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa. He claimed that someone created a fake page using his name to make fun of the drunk driving death of a pitcher.
La Russa claimed the tweets were “derogatory and demeaning” and that they infringed on his trademark rights. Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, also criticized the platform over fake users. This led to the creation of the blue check, and the system worked fairly well.
The removal of the verified accounts system means that as it was in the early days of the site, it’s incredibly easy to impersonate other people now. This has been happening in droves, with Musk banning accounts in force that impersonate him, and people even impersonating huge companies like Nintendo of America.
Things seem to be trending toward more confusion, and it just feels like Twitter is taking a huge step backward here. Perhaps Musk could take a look at that old lawsuit and remember why the blue checks appeared in the first place.
