After rolling out a policy that saw all verified legacy accounts lose their blue checkmarks, Twitter awarded Disney Junior UK a golden check mark, denoting that it was a business page. In an oversight from the company, though, it turns out that the Disney account was fake.
The site began applying checkmarks to organizations with large followings in an effort to confirm when accounts are run by businesses. The symbol is a part of Blue for Business, which grants gold checkmarks to corporate entities.
The fake account was sniffed out by Variety when it took notice that the follower count wasn’t on par with those of official Disney accounts. It was eventually confirmed to be a fake when the account user tweeted, “this isn’t actually real right? someone fucking pinch me or something.”
Twitter appears to have given a gold checkmark to a fake Disney Junior account 🤦🏻♂️ pic.twitter.com/0Ab1hE3cso
— Matt Navarra (I quit X. Follow me on Threads) (@MattNavarra) April 24, 2023
If a slip-up on Twitter’s part wasn’t bad enough, it turns out that @DisneyJuniorUK also reportedly used racial slurs in past tweets. The account was suspended, but not before jumping from 1,400 to more than 4,700 followers after the accidental verification.
Stable genius Elon Musk just gifted a fake Disney account a gold verification badge 🤦 pic.twitter.com/ESJmYjAkAy
— Tommy Maguire (@RationalPanic) April 24, 2023
The organizational verification costs $1,000 plus $50 extra for each affiliate account. Unless Disney mistakingly asked for the spoof account to be verified, Twitter may have just handed out the gold checkmark without a proper review.
Twitter finally suspended the fake Disney account, but not before letting it spend £1000 on corporate verification 😂 pic.twitter.com/Gh6UDOxlPG
— Andy Castell (@AJ3) April 24, 2023
Twitter has not made a statement about the false verification yet. With the account now being suspended, the social media platform can hope it marks the end of the incident, despite the ongoing drama surrounding the company’s new verification guidelines.
Image credit: Shutterstock
Source: Variety Via: TechCrunch
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