Tech Journalist Tested Elon Musk’s New Twitter Verification Safeguards and Successfully Impersonated a U.S. Senator

Geoffrey Fowler, a Washington Post technology columnist tested Elon Musk’s new and improved Twitter verification system and managed to successfully trick the social media platform into verifying a fake account for Senator Ed Markey (D-MA).

Fowler made clear in his write-up of the mini-investigation he did indeed have Sen. Markey’s approval to use his name for the fake account.

Fowler’s test of the system comes after many in the media raised concerns about Twitter’s new Twitter Blue subscription, which allows anyone to buy a verified account for $7.99. Musk and the social media platform pulled the service after launch due to mass impersonations but relaunched it in mid-December boasting of new and improved safeguards.

“Elon Musk said he would fix Twitter’s problem with impostors. The blue check mark on my fake U.S. senator suggests he still has a long way to go,” Fowler wrote in his article published Thursday.

Fowler’s experiment managed to dupe Twitter users and even resulted in a viral tweet from his fake account. “On Tuesday, @SenatorEdMarkey briefly went viral on Twitter. Gisele Barreto Fetterman, the wife of Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), thanked @SenatorEdMarkey in a tweet that garnered 140,000 views,” noted Fowler.

This wasn’t the first time Fowler ran tested Twitter’s verification system. Back in November, he also managed to trick the social media platform to verify a fake Twitter account in the name of another U.S. Senator.

Fowler explained at length how he managed to trick the social media platform and expounded an argument for why ensuring prominent accounts are indeed who they say they are is key to Twitter’s user experience.

“Two months into Musk’s takeover, millions of Twitter users face a real question: Is Twitter getting better or worse? Is it even worth putting our time into Twitter anymore, or should we abandon ship for something else, be it Mastodon, Instagram or TikTok?” Fowler writes, concluding:

Twitter has yet to devolve back into the impersonation circus we saw when Blue first launched. But my test shows Twitter does not understand the dangers of misinformation or the value of authenticated sources. Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter users face a greater risk of seeing something fake and thinking it is real. I don’t know if Twitter is going to die any time soon, but I’m spending less time on a service I can’t trust.