Fake accounts that have the blue X check, the old Twitter, are multiplying. The situation reaches a state of control so grotesque that you can no longer trust anything or anyone. When official accounts dispense with the check mark and fake ones do, it’s time to start worrying. Next, we will talk about some of the most serious examples of the catastrophe that looms over the social network.
Until recently, Twitter was a good way to keep up with breaking news. If someone passed away or there was news of national importance, you knew you would find out sooner on this platform. Now, unfortunately, check marks are sold, and there is so little control over them that, in a matter of a few minutes, anyone can impersonate someone else.
The Rubiales case
Imagine that you enter X and find the publication of an account that pretends to be the newspaper El Mundo. It has the same logo on the profile icon and uses an identical format to report breaking news. Initially, the chances of you believing it to be real are huge. You look at the logo, your brain rationalizes that the news seems undoubtedly from El Mundo, you see the check mark and read the information. What you find is the following.
The world
@Santodebot
🔴 Last minute | Rubiales breaks her silence: “I am a woman and I want you to treat me as such.” https://t.co/H4t0RIQ8Vb
August 31, 2023 • 10:08 AM
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296
Of course, it’s crazy. But taking into account the situation and everything that is happening around this controversy, one could come to think that anything is possible. Initially, you believe it. Then you hesitate a bit and that’s when you notice the username of the account. This is how you discover that you have been played with a joke. But for a few seconds, you thought it was real. Did you know? There are many people who do not get to do the verification that we indicate. They simply read and close the window or continue scrolling in X. Those users buy it, because surely their attention has quickly jumped to another topic. However, the residue of the news remains in the subconscious and this exposes them to a greater risk of fake news spreading.
As you will see in other examples, this is not the first case. And what is happening is that we are losing the confidence and interest that we had in Twitter as a way of being informed of current affairs. The cases, as we keep telling you, are not isolated.
Rosa Montero is not dead
One of the patterns that is being seen the most in X is the appearance of fake accounts from publishers and companies in the entertainment world, such as record companies, announcing that one of their artists has died. They are delicate cases, such as the one that occurred recently when a false account appeared with the blue check mark imitating the Alfaguara publishing house. His statement was about the writer Rosa Montero, author of books such as Good Luck, The Ridiculous Idea of ​​Never Seeing You Again or The Unknown, who was said to have died.
Rosa Montero
@BrunaHusky
As you know, there is a total cretin out there who is posting false accounts of publishers and other companies with which he communicates the death of well-known people. If I remember correctly, Perales was killed about a month ago. Now he has taken out a false note from Alfaguara saying that I have… https://t.co/ZoeBgGdKL9
August 31, 2023 • 10:08 AM
7K
127
Shortly after learning that the hoax about his death was spreading, Rosa herself published the message in X that you can see just above these lines. She with him made it clear that she was very much alive and also she remembered that, shortly before, it had also happened with José Luis Perales. The singer denied the news from a message issued from London, where he was at the time. In neither of the two cases was there retaliation against the accounts that had substituted the identity of these celebrities. This is the new identity of Twitter and it is becoming a battlefield open to a thousand misdeeds.
David Bisbal in the Madrid metro
This is one of the craziest cases that have been recorded in terms of the ideas of a parody account. The news was not posing as the famous Spanish singer, but was coming from a Twitter user who is known for playing pranks, but who uses the name Elon and a photo of the owner of X. That makes it more difficult to confuse with a real account, but it is clear that, given what happened, the verification mark can “work miracles” when it comes to giving credibility to any information.
Elon
@offensiveprank
https://t.co/riMeyA9OV3
August 31, 2023 • 10:08 AM
33.9K
215
Surely you know the story very well. The tweeter made up that he had seen David Bisbal making bigger waters in the Madrid Metro and the information moved so much that he ended up getting out of control. The news was even seen on television channels and a multitude of online newspapers began to dedicate articles to it. In some, they took the misinformation to a higher level by thinking that the photo he has on his Twitter profile page was his own when, in reality, I’m sure you know perfectly well who he is from. And the whole problem comes, beyond the eagerness of the press to look for headlines with clickbait that attract readers, from letting themselves be carried away by the simple thought of “if it has the verified mark, I can trust it.” Big mistake!
Moral: keep an eye out
As we told you, until the accessibility of the verified mark is controlled again, possibly X will be a place of greater risk every day in terms of being aware of news. There are more and more parody accounts and not all of them identify themselves as such. In some cases, those responsible go out of their way to gain the trust of users before coming up with something that is actually false. For example, they may post real news until, after they reach a certain number of followers, they post something they made up for one reason or another.
In some cases they are identified as a parody from the beginning, other times they back out, close the account or put an indicator that it is a fake account. There are a multitude of possibilities, but what we recommend is that you be cautious and do not believe that, by reading something from a verified account, it has to be real. Actually, there are thousands of official accounts of celebrities and professionals who do not have the verification mark because they do not want to pay for it, which further complicates the situation.
