Elon Musk is getting out-trolled—on his own platform
Elon Musk is an adept social-media troll. The CEO of Tesla, and now owner of Twitter, has called President Joe Biden a “damp sock puppet” and expressed surprise that liberal Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is still alive. He repeatedly bashed the Securities and Exchange Commission after the agency punished him for a bogus plan to take Tesla private that Musk tweeted in 2018.
Musk, however, is suddenly getting out-trolled—by pranksters on his own social-media site. One of Musk’s first moves after taking control of Twitter on Oct. 27 was to revamp the blue-check verification process Twitter had used to confirm that the accounts of certain public figures were legitimate. Musk slammed that as a “lords and peasants” system and rolled out a new program to give anybody who paid $8 a month a blue check mark, no verification necessary. In theory, that would help Twitter raise badly needed revenue and democratize the platform.
What Musk didn’t count on was the inevitable mischief gleeful gremlins would cause, given the opportunity he handed them. Several Twitter users have established “verified” accounts, complete with the coveted blue check mark, falsely claiming to be companies, politicians, celebrities and other familiar names. Then they set about making Musk’s job to transform Twitter a whole lot harder.
A bogus Eli Lilly account claimed that the company's insulin products were suddenly free. Gullible investors apparently bought the ruse, selling shares and sending the stock down 6.5% on November 11, before it recovered some of the loss. On its real Twitter feed, Lilly apologized for a "misleading message from a fake Lilly account." Pranks are funny, but antics that manipulate stock prices are very likely to get the SEC's attention.
A fake account claiming to represent Musk’s own company, Tesla, tweeted, “the 53% drop in stock price doesn’t phase us. If there’s anyone who knows about crashing, it’s us.”
A phony Pepsi account tweeted, “Coke is better.”
A fake Chiquita account announced, “We’ve just overthrown the government of Brazil.”
A bogus Nestle account tweeted, “We steal your water and sell it back to you, lol.”
Politicians have some surprising things to say in the new unverified Twittersphere. A fake Donald Trump account declared, “Time to come clean. I made January 6 happen."
A fake account for Kari Lake, who’s still in a contested race for Arizona governor, announced she had conceded to her Democratic opponent, which she has absolutely not done.
A fake George W. Bush account lamented, “I miss killing Iraqis.”
The accounts seem like a breeze to set up, with account handles a letter or two off from the original: @Pepico instead of @Pepsico, for example, and @GeorgeWBuhs instead of @GeorgeWBush. Twitter’s format allows the name above the handle to be the real brand. Many of the fake accounts feature the legitimate logo or photograph of the real account, which is easy to download from the web.
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Twitter will undoubtedly delete these fake accounts as it finds them, but these pop-up trolls are much more than a nuisance for the new Twitter. Many corporate brands have stopped advertising on Twitter while waiting to see what kinds of changes Musk makes. He has suggested he will ease the platform’s content moderation and allow more controversial posts. Selling verification badges, with no legitimacy requirement, was a step in that direction. But advertisers go to a lot of trouble to protect their brands and don’t want to be associated with rabble. Twitter is a relatively small platform anyway, and many brands don’t really need it.
Musk has already said that Twitter’s revenue is plunging, amid the advertising pullback. In a meeting with employees—the half of the staff he hasn’t fired yet—Musk said bankruptcy was a possibility. He has also told users: “Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months,” and “will keep what works and change what doesn’t.”
The unverified blue-check mark appears to be one change Twitter is ready to ditch. Twitter “paused” the sale of blue check marks on Nov. 11, as fake verified accounts began to pile up. But delighted Musk critics are screen-shotting their favorite fake accounts in a bid to save them for posterity, and sharing them with the hashtag #MuskVerified.
Some of the impostors even acknowledge their own perfidy. A fake pope points out, “As the Apostle tells us in 2 Corinthians 11:14, the wicked may pose as the righteous and lay snares to trap the unwary. Our blessed store is the ONLY authorized source for indulgences at $8 a month.” Musk may feel he needs an indulgence or two. But don’t expect him to pay $8.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @rickjnewman
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