Re:Twitter launches blue check for $7.99 monthly fee
by weinzierl on Sunday November 06, 2022 @02:19AM
(#33490042)
I can say fore sure that there were verified fake Elon Musks before the rollout.
For example
https://twitter.com/iamsimonyoung?s=21&t=bk20O5m6wZsdz0lQ9AT...
was posting as Elon Musk at least until 20221102. There was at least one other Elon Musk that was regularly spilled into my timeline, sometimes right before or after the real Elon. These accounts had also the same profile picture. It took me a while to realize that some of these posts are satire. Pretty much the scenario the blue checkmark was supposed to prevent.
Re:Twitter launches blue check for $7.99 monthly fee
by Ephil012 on Sunday November 06, 2022 @10:28PM
(#33500758)
I looked into it more and it seems I might be wrong about the rollout. It looks like iOS rolled out the new subscription, but I didn't see if they actually added checkmarks yet. I saw a new story saying checkmarks wouldn't be rolled out until after the election. So, the original commenter might have been right that there were musk impersonators before paid checkmarks became a thing.
I tried to look for their past tweets on the internet archive but didn’t find anything. So I can’t say for sure if they were verified beforehand or not.