Live blog: Twitter chaos – what’s going on?

So it seems almost inevitable that the Blue Tick verification process has been canned.

As the tweet above indicates, the chaos continues – which is why we started this live blog. What is going on?

Here’s an example of how hard some of these fake accounts are to spot:

Musk himself fell victim to this, with numerous fake accounts surfacing claiming to be him — and with a Blue Tick to prove it. This seemed to be the last straw, as Musk went on to bounce back on some of the more lax elements of the new verification process.

However, as people predicted, verified accounts started popping up on Twitter, and while many of them were clearly parodies, as they had the “Blue Tick,” it became hard to tell, especially with the more subtle accounts.

Unsurprisingly, the individuals and companies that were parodied weren’t too happy about this.

Worryingly for Twitter, many brands began announcing that they would no longer advertise on the platform.

Despite the concerns and complaints, Musk was initially dismissive.

Posting memes about people’s complaints made a lot of people feel like he wasn’t really taking the issue seriously.

Perhaps the most controversial thing to come out of Musk’s Twitter takeover are the changes in how accounts are verified.

Previously, if the verified account of a media outlet (such as TechRadar (opens in new tab)) or another organization has published something, at least you know it comes from an official source. The Blue Check also allowed Twitter users to tell the difference between the many celebrities on Twitter and users imitating them.

However, Musk has made a change that allows anyone to be verified for $8 a month.

This led some people to worry that users could impersonate official accounts and be easily verified, making it difficult for people to see which accounts were real – and which were not. And that’s exactly what happened.