- Twitter's new verification system is already being abused by trolls impersonating public figures.
- Accounts pretending to be LeBron James, George W. Bush, and O.J. Simpson have already appeared.
Twitter's launch of $8 verification on Wednesday saw the new system almost instantly abused by users impersonating and parodying celebrities and other public figures.
In one prominent example, a verified account pretending to be former US president George W. Bush made a tasteless joke about the 43rd president's role in the Iraq War, tweeting: "I miss killing Iraqis" with a sad-face emoji.
The tweet was then retweeted by an account pretending to be Tony Blair — the former UK prime minister who joined the 2003 invasion of Iraq — who added: "Same tbh."
The Bush account's bio also makes a crude joke about an online, frequently memed conspiracy theory linking the Bush administration to the September 11 terror attacks, saying: "so what if I did 9/11."
Both fake accounts were still live on Twitter Thursday morning, more than ten hours after the tweets were sent, though at the time of publication had been deleted.
Elon Musk previously said that impersonators would be "permanently suspended" unless they clearly identified as parodies.
Neither Bush nor Blair have personal Twitter accounts, but are verified through their foundations. Confusion over which accounts are real follows the brief introduction of an "Official" tag for the accounts of companies and prominent figures on Wednesday, which was rolled out for just a few hours before Musk stepped in and axed the feature.
Other examples of fake but verified accounts causing trouble soon after the new verification system came in included a user pretending to be O.J. Simpson. The account, which had a handle almost identical to the real O.J. Simpson, tweeted a reference to Simpson's infamous 1994 murder trial — when he was acquitted of the murder of his ex-wife Nicole.
"I'm ngl I did that shit," the verified account "ThaReal0J32" tweeted, attracting over 55,000 likes before it was deleted.
The real football star – whose username uses "The" instead of "Tha," and "O" rather than a zero, is yet to be verified on the platform despite having almost 900,000 followers. He previously congratulated Musk on the takeover, adding: "Maybe now I can get verified."
Tweeters also made use of the new easy access to verification to impersonate NBA legend LeBron James and pretend he had requested a trade away from the Los Angeles Lakers, per The Verge. The now-suspended @KLNGJamez account — Twitter's font means capital Ls look like the letter I — used emojis and hashtags that the real James often employs.
One user made a verified parody of the gaming company Nintendo and tweeted an image of Mario showing his middle finger, while a fake Joe Biden talked about self-gratification.
When James Felton, a British author, raised the tweets to Musk, Twitter's owner simply responded with a pair of laughing emojis.
Some of the trolls used their moment in the spotlight to slam the new system, which allows anyone to get a blue tick for an $8 monthly subscription to Twitter Blue.
The fake O.J. Simpson account for instance, tweeted that Twitter "should never have given a MFer like me $8," and blamed Musk for giving such "easy access" to the status.
The fake Bush account also responded to tweets about fake verified accounts saying: "Jed [Bush's younger brother] is smarter than Elon."
After undoing the "Official" tag on Wednesday, Musk tweeted: "Blue check will be the great leveler," but later said in a Twitter Space that the verification charge might be "a dumb decision, but we'll see."