‘Unnecessary Chaos’: CNN Reacts to Twitter’s New Verification System That Gave a Blue Checkmark to ‘Jesus Christ’
Twitter’s new pay-to-play verification system is confusing some users on its second day as an account with the name “Jesus Christ” now carries a blue check mark.
On Thursday, some users paid the $7.99 fee for verification to troll the masses and otherwise wreak havoc on the mental health of sports fans, opponents of war, and people who enjoy Nintendo.
Here are a few examples of the complete and utter madness on Elon Musk’s platform:
On CNN Newsroom, host Ana Cabrera asked, “What do former President Trump and basketball star Lebron James have in common?”
She answered each had spoof accounts on Twitter which were verified after whoever created them paid for a Twitter Blue subscription. She turned to correspondent Donie O’Sullivan for more.
“Things are getting really confusing and messy on Twitter right now, Ana,” O’Sullivan said. “In the past 24 hours, we’ve seen so many fake accounts pop up, pretending to be very famous people and getting that blue verified check mark. For years that has meant it’s the real person.”
O’Sullivan added:
Think how easy it is going to be for somebody to spin up an account to make it look like it’s belonging to a campaign or something official, or is something affiliated. We saw that with the Trump account. Look, there’s serious consequences that could come of all of this. We have seen pretty much everything that musk has brought into the company.
They talked about changing [the verification system] again, so this might change by the end of the day, the end of the week, so it is causing a bit of unnecessary chaos on the platform.
Twitter’s wacky Thursday played out as numerous high-level executives resigned and Musk warned employees of the potential for a “dire” future for the company he just paid $44 billion for.
Musk tweeted Thursday night that a failure to include the word “parody” in a username for accounts impersonating others would be suspended.
Watch above, via CNN.
