Twitter’s new wave of Blue checks is sowing chaos

On Tuesday, Twitter Blue accounts started to go live. Twitter Blue is the platform’s new subscription service, which costs $7.99 a month and grants users fewer advertisements and the distinctive blue check mark on their account. That check mark used to be a sign that the account’s owner was who they said they were; now, it’s a purchasable status symbol.

Surprising absolutely no one, this feature immediately led to chaos, misinformation, and mayhem as Twitter Blue users decided to flex their checks by posting spicy fake news. One early example was a post from “RockstarGamse” advertising an upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6 showcase. The post was quickly nuked, but it was followed by a wave of accounts pulling similar pranks.

Twitter has made some efforts to combat verified accounts sharing fake news, including suspending the fake Nintendo account, but it’s not really clear how the company will actually prevent misinformation.

On Wednesday morning, a second “official” marker was added to certain accounts, including major publications, business accounts, and notable figures. But the choices for who received the “official” mark appeared incoherent from the outside. And it was quickly and unceremoniously removed shortly after its launch, with Elon Musk tweeting that he had killed the feature. On Wednesday afternoon, Twitter Support tweeted that it was “aggressively going after impersonation and deception.”

Twitter users can also click the blue check mark, which will specify whether it has been granted by Twitter or purchased as part of a Twitter Blue subscription. However, it’s clear that these limited attempts aren’t stopping ambitious shitposters from creating fake corporate missives (and causing headaches for everyone in the process).

As such, browsing Twitter should be done with a good degree of caution. It’s like every day is April Fools now, so that great new announcement or shocking image might just be from a random person with eight dollars to spare. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is — and chances are, the official Nintendo account won’t be posting Mario flipping his fans off any time soon.