Twitter Verifies Account For Jesus, Program Suspended After Disastrous Launch As Corporate Sponsors Flee

After the launch of an updated Twitter Blue this past week, which has adjusted the verification
feature so that any account can pay $8 a month for a blue checkmark, a wave of chaotic activity
has rather predictably cropped up.

As anyone who understands the psychology of the internet may have guessed, users have
quickly taken the feature to the most insane degree and have impersonated brands, celebrities,
and now even religious figures. While you can still click on the checkmark to see whether that
user was previously verified or recently paid, these fakes have still had a real impact.

One Twitter account, aptly named “@Jesus,” has paid for verification and is posting goofy stuff
as the son of God. This past Sunday, they tweeted, “Got any plans? Don’t say church.”

Sure this account has probably offended a few Christians, but others had even bigger impacts with those
that they impersonated.

Users have adopted the branding of certain huge corporations and affected them legitimately for
only the cost of $8 and potentially getting your account suspended.

One fake account impersonated the aerospace and defense contractor Lockheed Martin and tweeted, “We will begin halting all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States until further
investigation of their record of human rights abuses.”

This tweet actually impacted Lockheed Martin’s stock price. This also happened to the drug
manufacturer Eli Lilley when a fake account tweeted, “We are excited to announce insulin is free
now,” causing internal panic at the company along with the alleged reversal of a significant $330
billion ad spend on Twitter.

Other high-profile advertisers putting Twitter in their rearview mirrors apparently also include
Audi, General Mills, United Airlines and Chipotle.

Musk seems to have sent Twitter into free fall in almost record time in his new position as the
platform’s owner. He has laid off a huge swathe of staff, and some recent rumors have shown
that he may even be asking some formerly fired employees to return after this chaos.