Twitter admits to inadvertently verifying a small number of fake accounts or bots. Now the account has been deleted and the blue check mark has been removed for violating the rules.
This verification error was revealed after data expert Conspirador Norteño found six accounts with blue check marks created on June 16th. This account has never tweeted before and two of them used stolen profile pictures.
“We erroneously agreed to the verification registration of a number of invalid (fake) accounts,” Twitter said in an official statement, as quoted from The Verge, Wednesday (14/7/2021).
"We have now permanently suspended the account in question, and removed the authentication badge, in accordance with our platform manipulation and spam policy."
Not long ago, Twitter reopened its account verification program after a long absence. The new program also installs new criteria, namely that accounts must be active, authentic and important in order to acquire blue lice.
Verified bot accounts certainly do not meet the set criteria, and on the other hand many users are unable to earn a blue check mark even if they meet those criteria. This incident shows that Twitter’s verification process is still problematic.
In a tweet, Norteño described the six bot accounts he found had 976 followers and followed 190 of the same accounts. All of these accounts were created between June 19 and 20, and most of the profile photos used were created by AI.
Meet @aykacmis, @degismece, @anlamislar, @aykacti, @kayitlii, and @donmedim, a group of Twitter accounts verified with blue checks made on June 16, 2021. No one has tweeted yet and they all have about 1000 followers (and most of them * followers * same).
cc: @ZellaQuixote pic.twitter.com/V82Wtu0SNr
- Conspirador Norteño (@ konspirator0) July 12, 2021
In total, Norteño says that hundreds of these accounts are part of a bot network of at least 1,212 accounts. It is not known where this network came from, but some of the accounts are included in Korean.
To date, Twitter has suspended five of the six verified bot accounts, and a sixth account appears to have deleted its own profile. Most of the boat network behind it has also been removed.
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