Twitter fakery is the price of Musk’s vanity

Within days of new owner Elon Musk tweeting that Twitter “needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world”, the platform has become parody central. Believe nothing you see on it. No one – and no brand – is safe.

Keen to prove the madness of the Chief Twit’s (now paused) sale of “blue ticks” – minus its previous identity verification element – to anyone willing to pay $8 a month, a flurry of accounts bearing what was once a reliable badge of authenticity are racking up likes and retweets.

Musk himself has been one of the top targets. A fake account for his car company Tesla tweeted an “appreciation post for our amazing founders” with pink heart emojis next to a (real) photograph of Musk beside convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell at a party.

Many tweets impersonating brands delight in simple mischief. “Coke is better,” read one truth from a fake Pepsi account. Others are darkly humorous and/or make political points: “We are excited to announce insulin is free now,” tweeted an account pretending to be Eli Lilly.

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Awkwardly, this forced the pharma giant’s real account to apologise “to those who have been served a misleading message”. In the US, people with diabetes must pay for insulin, creating dire financial difficulties for many.

Misinformation has always been present on social media. This was not the first week to see fake news circulate about the death of former US president Jimmy Carter, for example. But under Musk, wild fakery – slow to be removed – has become a defining feature of Twitter, and in record time.

The impersonators may be maximising the chaos, and often revelling in it too, but it was not caused by them. For that, look no further than Musk’s own vanity in pursuing actions he was warned against, starting with the $44 billion deal that gave Twitter shareholders their payday at the cost of the company’s viability. For all the jokes, this is a bleak and pathetic outcome.