Twitter continues to deal with confusion surrounding its new system for verifying accounts. Today, two Twitter pages that had the gold badge for verified business accounts were taken down after they were proven to be fake.
Twitter charges businesses $1,000 a month to get the coveted gold verified checkmark on their accounts. However, Deadline reports that a fake account, which claimed to be the official Disney Junior UK page, got the gold badge, and then it started posting several messages that would never be posted on a real Disney account. They included posts with profanity and racial slurs. The account was shut down earlier today.
Then, Deadline reported on a second fake Twitter account with the gold badge. This one claimed to be an official account for MTV"s reality show The Challenge. It posted violent video content before it was suspended today as well. There"s no word on how either of these Twitter pages got the gold badge.
This weekend, a few days after Twitter was supposed to remove the blue checkmarks from legacy verified pages, it restored many of them with large followings. The accounts, some of which were for people who have passed away, had not paid for the new $8 a month Twitter Blue service that was supposed to be the new and only way to get the blue verified badge.