Verified Twitter accounts impersonate major companies and celebrities, cause issues

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Social media is a way for many of us to stay up to date with what’s going on in the world, but the future of one company is still up in the air.

Recent changes to Twitter are causing lots of confusion and allowing misinformation to be shared. Much of this started happening when the company's new owner, Elon Musk, took over.

He launched a new feature this week that allowed users to pay $8.00 per month to be verified with the blue checkmark. Some users decided to take advantage of it and abuse it to impersonate brands and famous people.

Major companies like Nestle and Eli Lilly were a target. Since the tweets looked legitimate, several users believed Nestle really tweeted out “we steal your water and sell it back to you lol.” But that tweet was fake.

For Eli Lilly, the repercussions have been worse. A fake account claiming to be the pharmaceutical company tweeted they were giving away insulin for free. The real company had to apologize on Twitter for the fake account.

Since the tweet, it's caused the company's stock to drop a little more than 2% on Friday. It also sparked a debate about the cost of insulin.

Journalism and Strategic Media Associate Professor Matthew Taylor at MTSU thinks the verification system is a bad idea. He said the blue check marks once allowed users to verify an account was credible.

"Now, with paying for a verified checkmark, that kind of takes away one of those obvious indicators you could use to help guide your process to say, 'is this information real?'" Taylor explained.

Twitter has suspended the new verification feature, but some advertising firms have already recommended their clients suspend all paid advertising on Twitter for a while.

Taylor thinks more companies will pull away from Twitter if Musk doesn’t get it under control.

"It’s not just where your audience is and where you might find them or where you may reach the largest audience. It's about where you're putting your message and what’s surrounding it that could affect your brand positively or negatively," Taylor said.

Musk tweeted that his goal in changing Twitter and offering more options to users is to elevate citizen journalism, and he said that the media elite will try everything to stop that from happening.

Taylor thinks that making a profit appears to be the motive, and it could put your personal information at risk.

"The thing we should all be guarding against as users is our personal info. How is it being used and how is it being communicated? Because that really is valuable, so we don’t want to give that up easy," Taylor said.

Twitter Support tweeted that to combat impersonation, they’ve added the word “official” to some accounts. Also, Musk tweeted that going forward, accounts engaged in parody must include “parody” in their name, not just in their bio.