Fake Nintendo, Valve Twitter accounts already exist, stay safe everyone

The latest in seeming an endless list of dire consequences for Twitter users, Elon Musk’s purchase is very predictable: Mon redesign of the site’s verification system a flood of fake – and yet still “verified” – accounts started using the platform to screw people.

Previously, a “verified” Twitter account had a small blue checkmark next to its name, which meant that the person tweeting from that account was who you’d expect them to be. That’s what the word “verified” means in most contexts. But under Musk’s new Twitter Blue subscription system, anyone who pays him $8 a month can too to be “verified” simply because they are, and so the internet-wide shorthand for a trusted account – the blue checkmark found everywhere from Instagram to Depop – is now almost worthless on Twitter.

Here are some examples from earlier. The first is this account claiming to be Valve Software, tweeting about a new “competitive platform.” It’s not Valve, of course — the account name is actually valvesotfware, and Valve would never use the word “excited” in a release — but there’s a big blue checkmark next to its name, which means a lot of people believed it was legit and trusted it.

The second one is this fake Nintendo account. Not again actually Nintendo, but it has a blue check mark next to its name, which to most people who aren’t terminally online following every development in this ridiculous story, would suggest that it is.

(Note that while this is obviously a ridiculous tweet, an earlier tweet from the same now-suspended account tried to announce the arrival of Super Mario Galaxy on Switch)

if you use Twitter for video game news and you want to stay safe there, a good tip – even if it’s a bit of a hassle – is that you can dig into your verified account status and see what species verification they received. When you go to the account profile and click/tap the blue check mark, you will see a prompt that either says the owner paid $8 for their status or if they are a real verified person/company.

While the fake Nintendo account is here tweeting like a 13-year-old, the fake Valve account has since followed up this fake announcement with a statement explaining that they had reason to lie, saying in protest:

Twitter Blue is a problem, misinformation spreads so easily and the damage it can cause can have a real impact on people, far greater than fake game announcements. You now own a huge platform and it’s what you choose to do with it, make it better. @elonmusk

Pretty much! While the video game accounts here (and no doubt countless others popping up as I write this) are messing around with pretty innocent stuff –something sports fans did too—Now it’s just as easy to impersonate a news channel, politician or activist and get something done real damage.

In these cases, the advice is the same as for these game accounts (or any Twitter account); check the check to make sure the verified account is actually verified and… God I feel stupider for even having to write this.