Twitter has become a warzone over the past week with public enemy number one seemingly being its new owner Elon Musk. Now, the ruler has breathed into existence new rules to take away one of the platform’s biggest weapons, parody accounts.
After initially announcing that parody accounts would be exempt from Twitter’s impersonation guidelines, Musk now wants accounts of this type to make themselves known, not just in their bios, but also in their display names.
He also explains that accounts that are simply active to trick the public will face the consequences regardless. These new rules are only for genuine parody accounts.
This move comes as absolutely no surprise to anybody who has been active on Twitter in the past two days as the platform’s genius new pay-for-verification system led to a gigantic spike in parody accounts. Also, a lot of confusion among users.
Initially, Musk’s new subscription for the verification model caused concerns in the community about impersonation. In response to this, Elon said that if an account is a parody account it would not suffer any ban, otherwise, accounts that are impersonating other users would be suspended.
With a subscription to Twitter Blue, users will now receive a verification badge identical to the previous badge restricted to public figures. As you’d expect, many users have chosen to rebrand as parody accounts for celebrities including Musk himself.
While Musk’s latest rules might stop some parody accounts from popping up and fooling users it doesn’t seem like a permanent fix to the greater issue. Users will just need to wait and see how this plays out and what comes next in the new Twitter saga under the guidance of Musk.