Twitter a bit too blue as fake users get ‘ticks’

Accounts claiming to be Tony Blair and Fred West cause trouble on app after paying for ‘verified’ status

WITH its armies of trolls and running battles between Left and Right, Twitter has a well-deserved reputation as a divided place.

But yesterday, users might have been forgiven for finding the social network even more nightmarish than usual.

“I miss killing Iraqis,” said an account purportedly run by the former US president George W Bush. “Same, to be honest,” replied an alleged Sir Tony Blair.

These exchanges took place between accounts with a blue tick mark, which once signalled the user’s identity had been officially verified. Now, after a change to the system by Twitter’s new billionaire owner, Elon Musk, a blue tick can be bought for £7 per month.

The loose approach to account verification – introduced to generate funds -– came as Twitter’s new boss yesterday warned that “bankruptcy isn’t out of the question”.

Mr Musk told an all-staff call that the firm could have “net negative cash flow of several billion dollars” next year as it grapples with the economic downturn and an exodus of advertisers.

Upheaval at the Silicon Valley firm since Mr Musk’s takeover has seen big backers such as Volkswagen and General Mills, the maker of Cheerios breakfast cereal, pause adverts on the site.

The latest controversy at Twitter surrounds the ease with which troublemakers can pose as celebrities and criminals alike, ranging from US basketball star Lebron James to the Wests, the UK serial killers.

Pranksters pretending to be James bought a blue tick and posted that he was seeking a transfer to a new team. The fake news was shared thousands of times before journalists confirmed the basketball player was not intending to leave his team, the Los Angeles Lakers.

Another user with a blue tick pretending to be the Japanese game company Nintendo tweeted a picture of Super Mario holding up his middle finger.

A post seen by The Daily Telegraph appeared to show Donald Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani claiming that financier George Soros had once pushed him over in the street and left him “stuck on my back like a turtle for several minutes”.

Another user bought a blue tick, changed his display name to “Fred” and uploaded a photo of Fred and Rose West, the mass murderers from Gloucester. The user then posted “Me and Rose are coming to get ya”.

Pranksters also pretended to be Mr Bush and Sir Tony.

While all of the posters were fake, ithe accounts sharing the misleading content had blue verification ticks next to them. Many were suspended from the website after being exposed.

Previously, getting a blue tick involved being an organisation or person deemed to be of public importance such as a celebrity, politician or journalist. Users could apply for a tick but had to go through a process proving they were who they claimed to be.

These people still have blue ticks on Twitter, but have been joined by others using a separate scheme where they pay $8 (£7) a month for the privilege.

Mr Musk took control of Twitter in a $44billion buyout last month, swiftly dismissing half of its staff – around 3,700 people. Those made redundant included moderators and teams responsible for identity verification.

In a meeting intended to reassure advertisers, Mr Musk said his new verification process meant “someone has to have a phone and a credit card and $8 a month… so that’s the bar”.

A move to replace the blue tick verification method with a grey tick, subtitled “official” and displayed alongside the blue tick, was introduced and then scrapped within hours.

Mr Musk replied to a Twitter user wondering where his “official” grey tick had gone by saying: “I killed it.”

“Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months,” he added in a later post, hinting that more feature changes will be rolled out soon.

Twitter has been contacted for comment.