The system is experiencing widespread controversy after verifying a fake Disney Junior account.
The Twitter verification process has been controversial since Elon Musk took ownership of the company and made it a paid service.
Now, it is facing greater backlash after verifying a fake account that tweeted racial slurs.
The fake Disney Junior account passed the Twitter verification process and proceeded to tweet explicit remarks and racial slurs, backed by its gold badge status. Despite having nothing to do with the Disney company or any of its brands, the account that bore a handle that included the company name managed to pass the requirements to be verified by the social media platform.
The platform has undergone massive numbers of controversial changes and overhauls after its $44 billion purchase by Musk in 2022. That said, despite the new owner’s pledge to use the paid program to help weed out the fake accounts, its systems were unable to tell the difference between the fake account and those actually belonging to The Walt Disney Company.
The Twitter verification blunder arrived on the heels of the company removing unpaid blue badges.
Last week, the social media platform removed all previously verified users of their blue checkmark badges unless they chose to pay for the Twitter Blue subscription service. This step was already being met with speculation that there would be rampant issues with imitation accounts of large brands and popular users.
The timing of the blunder with the fake Disney account only underscored the problems already developing in the new system.
Upon discovering that it had secured a gold Twitter verification badge, the fake Disney account tweeted “No f****** way.” That account has since been suspended, but not before tweeting racial slurs and false announcements. For example, it tweeted that South Park would be moved to the Disney Junior TV channel with content geared toward kids aged 2 to 7 years old. Clearly, this was not true, and the actual company has no intention of adding the adult show to its early childhood programming.
Rolling Stone UK attempted to reach out to the social media company for comment, the press department auto-responded with a poop emoji – a practice adopted when the majority of the communications team at the company in the widespread layoffs ordered by Musk.