Twitter’s ‘Fixed’ Blue Verification Program Still Horribly Broken, As The Taliban Gets Verified

As you’ll recall, Elon Musk’s first “big idea” for “saving Twitter” was to get rid of the existing verification program, oddly and uncomfortably merge it with Twitter’s subscription program, Twitter Blue, and… um… profit? Lots and lots of people (including Twitter’s existing trust and safety team) explained why this was a stupid idea, but Musk insisted that the team of developers he was likely going to fire anyway had to get it ready in a week or he’d fire them.

Hilariously, Musk pretended that his new system was somehow less elitist than the old system, when the reality is that the new system was just more fucked up, and the company almost immediately brought back the “elitism” of special verified accounts as advertisers flipped out. This was, in typical Musk fashion, because he never bothered to understand the reasons why every social media eventually comes up with a true verification system (which Twitter pioneered, and then everyone else copied).

So, just as everyone predicted, the initial verification system was a hilariously funny disaster, with tons of important people and brands impersonated (sometimes convincingly, sometimes hilariously). Musk shut the program down the next day and promised it wouldn’t come back until the problems were solved… in about two weeks. It took a little longer than that, but the program did come back. And yet… it doesn’t look like they actually fixed the problems.

Last week, the Washington Post revealed that they had (for the second time) successfully impersonated Senator Ed Markey (to the point that a semi-viral tweet by Senator Fetterman’s wife linked to the fake “verified” Ed Markey) rather than the real one.

After Blue 2.0 (my term for it) launched on Dec. 12, I made another faux Markey and applied for verification. Some of Twitter’s new requirements slowed down the process — and might dissuade some impatient impersonators — but the company never asked to see a form of identification. Last week, up popped a blue check mark on my @SenatorEdMarkey account. Oops! I did it again.

Also, new research has found that the newly minted “Blue verified accounts” have become a leading source of disinformation on Twitter in the last month, especially medical disinformation.

And, then, this week, it came out that Taliban members had successfully bought their way to respectability with a verified blue check.

Previously, the blue tick indicated “active, notable, and authentic accounts of public interest” verified by Twitter, and could not be purchased.

But now, users can buy them through the new Twitter Blue service.

At least two Taliban officials and four prominent supporters in Afghanistan are currently using the checkmarks.

Hedayatullah Hedayat, the head of the Taliban’s department for “access to information”, now has the tick.

Cool. Cool. No problems there. No problems at all.

Of course, as that story went viral, it appears that Musk’s minions scrambled to remove the check marks. I’m guessing he didn’t refund their $8.