Elon Musk’s Blue Tick System Spawns Spoof Account Galore

From ex-President George W Bush to the social media platform itself, Twitter has become inundated with fake profiles in the wake of the social media platform’s $8 per month paid-for verification system launch.

So much for new “Chief Twit” Elon Musk’s claims that the pay system would “defeat the bots and trolls.” While users appear to be enjoying the spoof accounts galore, Twitter is in a frenzy to deactivate these parody accounts. However, right now it looks like its losing the battle, with posts being endlessly retweeted by users for kicks. Politicians, businesses, celebrities are all being parodied.

The microblogging site itself was trolled, with the impersonator offering the Blue Tick for “free” to"crypto/NFT holders who authenticated their wallet assets." Before being suspended, the parody account's tweet drummed up over 35,000 retweets and 4,990 likes.

Elon Musk himself was also parodied, with one tweet reading, “Starting today we’ll begin offering Twitter Gold: a free subscription that gets you yearly family vacaions and nightly dinners with me. If your name is Grimes. Please come back. I love you. [sic]”

Someone impersonating ex-US President George W Bush wrote on Twitter that he “missed killing Iraqis,” with Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair appearing to share that sentiment.

One troll account impersonated Rudy Giuliani, ex-president Donald Trump’s attorney.

A since-deleted account on Twitter falsely claimed to belong to NBA star Lebron James. Hiding under the handle @KINGJamez, the troll took to Twitter to claim the celebrity was requesting a trade from the L.A. Lakers.

A fake @AroldisChapman account claimed that the Cuban-born American professional baseball relief pitcher had re-signed with the Yankees for three years.

American multinational technology company Apple was not spared amid the parody onslaught either. An account under the name of “appletvpius” (with the I capitalized in an effort to make it resemble the letter L) sought to redirect users to a YouTube channel.

Nintendo of America saw very convincing account using the name “nintendoofus” impersonating it retweeted, with Mario, the character created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, “flipping the bird” for about two hours before it was taken down. The tweet was retweeted more than 2,300 times.

Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company found itself targeted, with a fake account announcing to the Twitter world that "insulin is free now."

A Bellevue, Washington, based video game developer, Valve Software was spoofed using the phishing trick of transposing letters. Having signed up as “valvesotfware,” the account announced that it was "excited to unveil Ricochet: Neon Prime, our next competitive platform." The tweet ratcheted up hundreds of retweets.

Users of Twitch, the US video live streaming service, were dumbfounded when new revenue splits for creators were announced via a verified Twitch account that was retweeted hundreds of times.

Currently, Twitter has suspended many of the spoof accounts, while also appearing to bar new accounts from signing up for the $8 verification system.

Earlier, the billionaire entrepreneur had tweeted that accounts impersonating other people must include the word "parody" in the name graph of the accounts instead of the bio graph.