It seems Elon Musk is willing to reverse his leadership Twitter in one of the biggest gags in the history of social media that even surpasses the embarrassing image the Metaverse has to offer. Shortly after a radical change to the account verification mechanism, the label of which is now obtained simply by making a payment, a significant number of accounts appeared impersonating well-known companies, persons and figures like Nintendo America, Valve, LeBron James, Donald Trump and Jesus Christ.

Now we all know that Twitter verification was a mechanism to indicate that the person, company, or organization behind the account was actually that person and not someone else impersonating an identity or brand. Unfortunately, it appears to have become simply “the account that paid for Twitter Blue,” or at least that’s what’s been going on in the last few hours.

Fortunately, Twitter stepped in, but the screenshots are already circulating online and the reputational damage seems hard to repair. Actually, the company has already come forward and said that it is “aggressively conducting phishing and deception“and it’s better to act like it, because what can be seen as a prank from the outside has a real chance of leading to legal problems, especially if we consider that the origin is in an authentication mechanism that passed or at least became a joke. Despite the measures taken by the company, it seems that it is still possible to see accounts impersonating brands, personalities or people.

The impersonation problem could be fixed with some new tag to identify authentic accounts, however Elon Musk advocated for its removal hours after implementation. It remains to be seen whether the company will continue on its thirteenth or if it will eventually correct itself and implement something that will correct the grotesque seen in the last hours, especially considering the possibilities that the matter could lead to legal problems.

Since taking over Twitter after backing out of a legal battle he may have lost, Elon Musk has said, “right or wrong, what matters is that they’re talking about me.” First he fired the top managers; then to a large percentage of the labor force, although it seems to have partially corrected itself here; and finally we have the account verification mess.

We do not currently label accounts as “Official”, but we do aggressively pursue impersonation and deception.

—TwitterSupport (@TwitterSupport) November 9, 2022

All of Musk’s diving around his leadership of Twitter looks set to destroy the social network in no time if he doesn’t correct course, especially as his decisions are already starting to negatively impact users. Those who started to distrust can jump to Mastodon, a clone of Twitter published as free software and able to work in a decentralized way (in fact it already works). It is true that it currently does not have the activity of Twitter and that many companies and personalities are not there yet, but seeing Musk’s questionable decisions as the absolute head of Twitter, probably more than one will consider opening an account in Mastodon as a precaution.