Twitter Blunder Mistakenly Verified A Number Of Bot-Powered Fake Accounts

Twitter may not be the largest social media network, but it is indeed dealing with a huge number of users.

Twitter is known for pioneering the 'verified badge'. Introduced in June 2009, the Twitter verification system provides users a means to distinguish genuine notable account holders, such as celebrities and organizations, from impostors or parodies. These accounts have that infamous blue check mark displayed beside their account name.

For all this time, it is known that having a verified account means that Twitter has taken steps to ensure that the account is actually owned by the person or organization whom it is claimed to represent.

But this time, a blunder somehow verified a number of accounts, despite them being fake accounts.

The mistake was found by data scientist Conspirador Norteño, who discovered six verified accounts which were only about a month old.

Norteño added that the six newly-created verified accounts have 977 followers in common, in which the followers are part of a botnet, which follow the aforementioned verified accounts as well as other members of the botnet, and followees, which are followed by the other bots.

Besides that, none of them had posted a single tweet, and were using AI-generated photos as their profile pictures.

Twitter's blue checkmark is one of the most sought-after quirks on the platform.

And this incident happens weeks after Twitter relaunched its public verification program, which requires accounts to have been active in the past six months, and to fit “one of several criteria: government, companies, brands and organizations, news outlets and journalists, entertainment, sports and gaming, activists, organizers and other influential individuals.”

The platform also said that it has plans to expand this to include “scientists, academics, and religious leaders.”

Those who wish to earn the blue checkmark, should have a clean record with regard to rule violations, meaning that they should not have experienced something that has caused them to be locked out of their account for longer than 12 hours within the previous year.

A more controversial rule requires users to refrain from “behavior such as harassment or posting content that promote[s] the supremacy of a particular group, both on and off Twitter.”

Responding to this mishap, Twitter said that it has permanently suspended the accounts.

“We mistakenly approved the verification applications of a small number of inauthentic (fake) accounts,” Twitter said. “We have now permanently suspended the accounts in question, and removed their verified badge, under our platform manipulation and spam policy.”

While this incident here was spotted quickly, and Twitter responded just as fast, this suggests that Twitter’s verification process is not manual and involves automation, can be tricked, and is at this time, having some issues.

A former Facebook chief security officer, Alex Stamos, suggested that it could have been an “inside job,” noting that Instagram had also experienced something similar.

Stamos also noted that many of the account names among the new Twitter bots were Turkish, suggesting a potential national link, or at least an attempt to imply one.