Blue tick saga: Jesus Christ now has a verified Twitter account. Thanks to Elon Musk

Before the takeover, Elon Musk claimed that Twitter was ridden with bots/fake accounts, and hence he did not want to close the $44 million deal. But now, Twitter is ridden with a host of users impersonating major brands and celebrities, even God!

Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk has been constantly making changes to the micro-blogging platform. The most controversial being – a verified account (popularly called ‘a blue tick’) for $7.99. Thanks to this new Twitter Blue feature, Jesus Christ now has a verified account.

Experts had expressed their concerns to the news agencies as soon as the news of a paid blue tick broke, saying that making the checkmark available to anyone for a fee could lead to impersonations and the spreading of misinformation and scams. And that is precisely what happened.

Soon after Twitter rolled out the blue tick mark feature for Twitter Blue users, fake accounts of former US President Donald Trump, who is banned from the social network, started popping up with a blue verification tick. Twitter Blue users also impersonated gaming character Super Mario and Laker’s player LeBron James. And now, Jesus Christ too has a verified account. All of these accounts carried a blue verification tic

Before the takeover, Elon Musk claimed that Twitter was ridden with bots/fake accounts, and hence he did not want to close the $44 million deal. But now, Twitter is ridden with a host of users impersonating major brands and celebrities, even God!

Just a day ago, Twitter decided to ‘kill’ the ‘Official’ labels hours after launching it. Twitter’s decision to roll out the “Official” label was to provide a second verification label to limit confusion between legitimate accounts and those that pay for their blue ticks.

Justifying the constant changes that the platform is undergoing, Twitter top boss Musk tweeted, “Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works and change what doesn’t.”

Twitter’s current verification system has been in place since 2009 and was created to ensure high-profile and public-facing accounts are who they say they are. There are about 423,000 verified accounts on Twitter currently – belonging to celebrities, businesses, politicians, and largely – independent journalists.

(Hindustan Times)