Tweets get harder to believe as labels change meaning

The removal of checkmarks that allowed accounts to be authenticated has shaken up a platform that once seemed indispensable for keeping up with breaking news.

In the 24 hours since Twitter last week removed the blue check mark that historically identified public agencies, at least 11 new accounts began impersonating the Los Angeles Police Department.

More than 20 purported to be various federal government agencies. Someone posing as the mayor of New York promised to create a Department of Traffic and Parking and to cut police funding by 70%.

M. Musk's decision to stop ticking off people and groups proven to be who they say they are, and instead offering them to anyone who has paid for one, is the latest uproar on Twitter , the social media giant he's vowed to remake since acquiring it. last year for $44 billion.

The changes rocked a platform that once seemed indispensable for following the news as it broke out in the world. world. Information on Twitter is now increasingly unreliable. Accounts posing as public officials, government agencies, and celebrities have proliferated. The same goes for propaganda and disinformation that threatens to further erode trust in public institutions. The consequences are only beginning to be felt.

Alyssa Kann, a research associate at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, said Twitter under Mr. Musk is dismantling systematically the safeguards that had been put in place after years of thought and controversy.

"When there are so many things wrong at the same time, c is like, which fire do you put out first?" she said.

After a public dispute with NPR, which Twitter falsely labeled a state-affiliated media outlet, the platform removed the week last all labels that had identified state-owned media, including those controlled by authoritarian states like Russia, China, and Iran.

This , coupled with the decision to stop blocking recommendations about them, coincided with a spike in engagement for many such accounts, according to research from the Digital Forensic Research Lab and another organization that studies misinformation, Reset, based in London.

In Sudan, new accounts on Twitter are misrepresenting both sides of the civil war that has broken out there. An account that presumably bought a blue tick falsely claimed the death of Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, the leader of the Rapid Support Forces rebels. More than 1.7 million people viewed the tweet.

Twitter's new head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, did not respond to a request for comment on the changes and their consequences.

Twitter has always been a source of misinformation and worse, but previous policies sought to inform readers of content sources and limit the most egregious instances. The start of verified accounts on Twitter in 2009 is commonly associated with Tony La Russa, a major league baseball manager who sued Twitter for trademark infringement and other claims after impersonating the platform.

< p class="css- at9mc1 evys1bk0">Over time, verified accounts with blue checkmarks have directed users to official sources and real people. Labeling news outlets as state media indicated that the accounts reflected a certain point of view.

Impersonators became a problem almost immediately after M Musk took the helm in November and offered to sell the checkmarks to anyone who signed up for the monthly fee. It backtracked after companies like Eli Lilly and PepsiCo struggled with seemingly verified fake accounts promising free insulin and praising Coca-Cola's superiority.

Last week, Twitter began removing blue checkmarks from businesses, government agencies, news outlets and others that didn't agree to pay. It seems that many chose not to register, although Twitter did not release any figures.