Twitter witnesses spike in impersonations after Elon Musk launched paid verification

Elon Musk acquired Twitter to tackle challenges that he stated Twitter was facing. Before the acquisition, he was complaining about all the spam and fake accounts on Twitter, however, after his acquisition, it seems Twitter has ended up with new problems. People with verification impersonating other verified accounts on Twitter was not really a problem that Twitter had before Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter. Now, it has become quite prevalent.

According to a report from CNN, different verified accounts impersonated Donald Trump, George Bush, Tony Blair, Elon Musk and many other prominent public figures. The person who impersonated Donald Trump said that he relied on his spare account, paid for the Twitter blue service and within two hours had a verified account, impersonating Trump. This comes at a time when the Twitter CEO Elon Musk conducted a poll amongst his followers, asking them if the amount of bots and spam on Twitter have gone down. One user pointed out to him in reply that "I've seen like 30 people with check marks pretend to be major companies in celebrities. I'd account that as scam / spam, so no."

Twitter has not addressed the spike in impersonations yet

Cybersecurity Expert Rachel Tobac told CNN that, “this verification roll out is causing huge trust issues across the platform already." The potential for fraud could be significant if users with verified accounts pretend to be government officials and first responders. Elon Musk has so far not addressed the issue of spike in impersonators on Twitter. During a Twitter spaces event with advertisers, the new Twitter CEO Elon Musk said that impersonators on Twitter would be deterred from impersonating other accounts because they will run out of credit cards and phone numbers. Yoel Roth, head of trust and safety at Twitter has also not addressed the spike in impersonations. Yoel Roth has spoken about the steps Twitter is taking to counter hate on the platform. "Update on our efforts to combat hateful conduct: We've not only mitigated the recent surge in harmful behaviour, but have reduced impressions on this content in Search by ~95% relative to even prior baseline levels. We're continuing our work to make Twitter safer every day," he said.