Twitter’s changes to its verification system means it’s now much easier to create a fake account and pretend you’re a major games company.
We’re not going to get into all the madness of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter because it’s all too depressingly stupid, but the changes in how the verified blue ticks work is currently causing turmoil because it’s made it much easier to fake an official account.
We assume this must be happening in all sorts of different areas, but in gaming it’s meant that for the paltry sum of £6.99 you can get a verified tick that makes it look like fake accounts for big name companies like Nintendo and Valve are real.
That’s led to not only a ton of fake news but things like the doctored image of Mario giving his fans the bird. The Twitter handle of @nintendoofus is obviously not real but the name was listed as Nintendo of America and by paying for the blue tick it suddenly looked official to casual observers.
Twitter does seem to have realised the problem, as the blue tick has been removed at time of writing, along with most of the Nintendo related posts, but otherwise the account is still up and running.