Game companies suffer fake news posts from Twitter's paid 'verification' system

Twitter made its revised Twitter Blue subscription service available on iOS in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zeal, and the UK on November 9, ushering in large swaths of companies having their accounts impersonated.

Twitter has rolled out the new Twitter Blue subscription service that allows users to pay $8 for a "verified" checkmark on their account, as Twitter owner Elon Musk believes pigging backing off payment systems such as Apple Pay authenticates the holder of that Twitter account, flushing out scammers, bot and spam accounts. Paying for Twitter Blue also gives the account prioritization in replies, messaging, search, and other customization features.

The rollout hasn't been without its hiccups, as companies are seeing their likely already-verified account being impersonated by random Twitter users that have purchased the verified check mark via Twitter Blue. An example of this is the above tweet from an account posing as Nintendo of America. Valve was also impersonated when a user falsely announced Ricochet: Neon Prime, which was described as the "next competitive platform". Twitch also fell victim to an account impersonating it and creating a viral post that falsely announced a new sub-split that would go into effect next month.

The most egregious impersonation I've seen so far is Twitter's own account being impersonated by a random user who posted a tweet that announced Twitter Blue was now free to "crypto/NFT holders" that authenticated their wallet assets via a provided link. Sadly, that post received more than 35,000 retweets before it was removed.