Being the real Christ for 8 dollars: the occurrence of Elon Musk that fills Twitter with ‘authentic fake profiles’

If there can be real fake gold or one original copy of Las Meninas de Velázquez, then there may be a Twitter account in the name of the true Jesus of Nazareth (yes, the one from the Bible). It has almost 800,000 followers on the birdie network and can display the blue badge that until now distinguished verified accounts.

That distinction was reserved for profiles of “public interest, authentic, relevant and active”. These criteria, which are maintained in the version of Twitter in Spanish, have been blown up since Elon Musk – new owner after disbursing 44,000 million dollars – has decided to charge eight dollars for them, which has opened the door for anyone with that amount you can pass yourself off as a ‘real’ profile.

The mother of the lamb is in this sentence from the blue badge requirements: “Now the blue checkmark can mean two different things.” The Internet and the human brain do not get along with ambiguity, something that Elon Musk seems not to have taken into account.

Thus they have arisen real fake accounts of the NBA star LeBron James, of Nintendo (with a photo of Mario Bros raising the ‘expletive finger’) and of other institutions and politicians, such as George W. Bush (missing killing Iraqis), Tony Blair, Joe Biden or donald trump

The thing is more serious than it seems, because professional swindlers (organized gangs of phishing, vishing, smishing and other practices that end in -ing) are preparing to make a killing now that Musk has made it easier for them to fool users.

“Cybercriminals all too easily use social media as the perfect vehicle to target unknown victims, but when there is no clear and genuine way to verify identities, it opens the way to impersonated accounts, which will undoubtedly be abused by hackers. threat actors looking for a scam,” says Jake Moore, global cybersecurity advisor at security firm ESET, quoted as saying. for the magazine wired.

Last Wednesday the absurdity reached the extreme when Musk decided to add a gray badge with the legend ‘official’ to the verified accounts, something that lasted only a few hours and whose rapid elimination the billionaire himself proudly displayed, bragging about correcting an error that he himself had committed: “I just screwed her up.”

If there was applause, they were not heard.

‘Ay, Twitter’, in A Topic A Day, the elDiario.es podcast


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Being the real Christ for 8 dollars: the occurrence of Elon Musk that fills Twitter with ‘authentic fake profiles’