The account, @DisneyJuniorUK, was sending out hateful tweets, but it was able to get a gold check mark before it was shut down.
The owner told his fans, “This isn’t really right. Someone pinch me or something,” and the tweet went viral.
It comes at a time when people are still confused about how Twitter’s new verification system works.
Twitter has been asked to say something.
A gold mark has also been given to the “real” Disney Junior account.
Last week, Twitter took away the blue checkmarks from “legacy” verified accounts and gave them a new color scheme. This was done with the help of Elon Musk, who owns Twitter.
Even though many famous accounts lost their badges at first, most of them got them back over the weekend, and almost everyone with more than a million followers got a new blue tick.
- Blue: The traditional mark of verification now means the account is subscribed to Twitter Blue, from $8 (£6.40) a month, and completed some verification steps such as having a mobile phone linked to the account. It must also be older than 30 days and have no recent changes to name or handle
- Gold: These marks are reserved for organisations and businesses who pay $1,000 a month plus additional fees for subsequent accounts
- Grey: Is the mark of an official government account, such as a national agency or a head of state
Matt Navarra, a social media expert, told the BBC that removing legacy checkmarks was a big mistake and “possibly Elon’s biggest Twitter mistake so far.”
“Since Elon took over Twitter six months ago, the platform has gone from one crisis to the next,” he said.
“He’s now made the perfect place for fake accounts and false information to grow, and there’s no real way to protect its users (or other brands) from the mess he’s made. After this latest mistake, it wouldn’t surprise me if more brands started to remove themselves from Twitter.
This proof is being shared far and wide as an early example of what critics of Elon Musk have warned about: fake accounts getting a badge of authenticity, which gives them free reign to spread false information under a fake veneer of authority.
In this case, the account owner seems just as surprised as everyone else that it happened. It wasn’t even trying to look like an official Disney site. And that brings up even more questions, like how did this obvious joke get a free gold tick?
Twitter has already stopped giving free blue ticks to accounts with more than a million followers, and more and more accounts seem to have badges without paying for them.
When Mr. Musk took over, he said that he wanted to make Twitter a fair place for everyone. He said that it wasn’t fair that Twitter decided on its own which views were more important than others.
But running a social network comes with responsibilities, and so far we’ve seen a lot of signs that his dream of social media by subscription isn’t quite coming true.
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