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By Matt O’Brien and Kathleen Foody | Associated Press
Twitter has long been a way for people to keep track of tornado watches, train delays, news alerts or the latest crime warnings from their local police department.
But when the Elon Musk-owned platform started stripping blue verification checkmarks this week from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee, it left public agencies and other organizations around the world scrambling to figure out a way to show they’re trustworthy and avoid impersonators.
High-profile users who lost their blue checks Thursday included Beyoncé, Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey and former President Donald Trump. But checks were also removed from accounts for major transit systems from San Francisco to Paris, national parks like Yosemite, official weather trackers and some elected officials.
Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue-check system. In the past, the checks meant that Twitter had verified that users were who they said they were.
While Twitter is now offering gold checks for “verified organizations” and gray checks for government organizations and their affiliates, it was not always clear why some accounts had them Friday and others did not.
Fake accounts claiming to represent Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the city’s Department of Transportation and the Illinois Department of Transportation all began sharing messages early Friday falsely claiming that Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive — a major thoroughfare — would close to private traffic starting next month.
A critical eye could spot obvious hints of the fraud. The account handles are slightly different from the authentic ones representing Lightfoot and the transportation agencies. The fakes also had far fewer followers than the legitimate accounts. But the fakes used the same photos, biographical text and home page links as the real ones.
The genuine, long-standing accounts for Lightfoot and the transportation agencies did not have a blue or gray checkmark as of Friday. Requests for comment were not immediately returned.
Other agencies said they were awaiting more clarity from Twitter, which has sharply curtailed its staff since Musk bought the San Francisco company for $44 billion last year.
