How A Fake Disney Account Convinced Elon Musk's Twitter It Was Legit

Elon Musk’s Twitter decided to finally get rid of the legacy blue verified checkmark on April 20, following which the platform was enveloped in chaos — but what happened next was just plain bizarre. 

What Happened: Twitter’s verification process has come under fire after a fake Walt Disney Company’s DIS account, @DisneyJuniorUK, managed to get verified with a gold tick. 

The account holder took to Twitter to announce this development, resulting in the tweet getting viral. The account has since been suspended from the platform.

See Also: Elon Musk’s Twitter 2.0 To Label Tweets Violating Hate Speech Policy

Interestingly, the “real” Disney Junior account has also been awarded a gold badge. 

For the unversed, the gold checkmark on Twitter is for organizations and businesses paying $1000 a month to the microblogging site. 

Why It’s Important: What comes as a surprise, in this case, is that while Musk’s decision to monetize the coveted blue checkmark raised concerns about scammers posing as real account holders to spread misinformation, how did an account which doesn’t seem to be pretending to be an official account end up with a free gold tick. 

Musk took the legacy-verified blue checkmarks away last week but paid personally for a few people, including Stephen King and LeBron James. 

However, later it was reported that almost every account with over one million followers was given a new blue tick, including some celebrities who aren’t alive. 

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