Twitter Tests Fake Disney Account, Claims Dead Celebs Subscribe to Twitter Blue

Twitter’s big checkmark transition has caused further chaos that has characterized Elon Musk’s work as the social network’s owner and CEO. Over the weekend, Twitter put checkmarks on the accounts of several famous people who didn’t pay for them—including some dead celebrities—with a message that the accounts had subscribed to the $8-a-month Twitter Blue service.

“This account is verified because they have subscribed to Twitter Blue and have verified their phone number,” says a message attached to blue-badged accounts including Kobe Bryant and Chadwick Boseman. Meanwhile, living celebrities who received the same checkmark made sure to tell followers that they hadn’t actually paid for a Twitter Blue monthly subscription or verified their phone numbers. It would be more accurate to say that Twitter gave free subscriptions to people with a large number of followers, whether they wanted a checkmark or not.

A blue checkmark on Twitter indicates that the account is noteworthy and that Twitter has verified that the person running the account is who they say they are. Now, some of the famous people who got the checkmark want to make sure no one mistakenly believes they’re giving Musk’s company $8 a month. As Slate writes, Musk’s decision to remove “legacy” checkmarks and make them premium features “turned the blue checkmark into a scarlet letter.”

Twitter also made a notable mistake last night in awarding its gold verification badge to a fake Disney account that posted racist slurs. The gold badge comes with the message, “This account has been verified because it is an official organization on Twitter.”

The fake “DisneyJuniorUK” account received a gold checkmark despite barely having more than 1,000 followers. Internet Archive Capture shows. He gained a few thousand more followers before being suspended.

“We understand that Disney representatives in the UK became aware of the fake account this morning and immediately contacted counterparts on Twitter,” Deadline wrote today. Twitter is though Charges businesses $1,000 per month As for Gold Checkmarks, it has waived fees for its top 500 advertisers and 10,000 most followed organizations that were verified.

Dead celebrities “verified their phone numbers”

Unpaid blue checkmarks (technically, white or black checkmarks on a blue background) usually appear on accounts with at least 1 million followers. Programmer Travis Browne, who monitors Twitter Blue subscriber IDs. Wrote yesterday That it “found 110 accounts out of a total of 9,884 that were not marked as Blue Subscribers.”

“Yesterday almost all accounts with more than 1 million followers were ‘gifted’ a Twitter Blue subscription against their will,” said analyst Oliver Alexander. wrote.

Applying checkmarks to notable accounts is not that different from the pre-Musk system. But a big difference now is that the message attached to the checkmark indicates that the account holder has paid for the badge and verified their identity.

Dead celebrities who are claimed to have subscribed to Twitter Blue include Kobe Bryantthe actor Chadwick BosemanComedian Norm McDonaldthe rapper Mac MillerAnd the chef Anthony Bourdain. Abe ShinzoThe Japanese prime minister, who was assassinated in July 2022, also has a label claiming to have “subscribed to Twitter Blue” and verified his phone number.

While it’s possible that whoever manages the dead person’s account paid for Twitter Blue, that doesn’t seem to be the case here. The most recent tweet on the Bryant account is from Jan. 25, 2020, a day before the basketball Hall of Famer’s death. While Bozeman’s account continued to post after his death, the McDonald, Miller, Bourdain, and Abe accounts had zero posts shortly before his death.