X, the former Twitter, no longer appears to be just a stick for innocent bluebirds. Rather, the platform now seems to be a hotbed for terrorist accounts.
The blue checkmarks on the then Twitter used to be reserved only for celebrities, but since the arrival of Elon Musk, anyone can now have a checkmark after their name.
It has become primarily a revenue model for Elon Musk. In fact, the verification of X-accounts does not seem to be going so well. Several terrorists have managed to get a blue checkmark.
From a checkmark on Twitter to verification by X
The non-profit organization Tech Transparency Project (TTP) has investigated certified X accounts. It shows that 28 people/organizations were simply able to open an account on the platform when they shouldn’t have.
And what’s more, this is against U.S. government rules. After all, a company is not allowed to sell anything to the nationals of a country or organization that is under sanctions. So that seems to be the case with Twitter, or X, in other words.
TTP has listed all 28. These accounts include a number of terrorists. For example, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah simply had a blue check mark, meaning his ID was simply verified. Meanwhile, the account, which was followed by 93,000 people, appears to have been removed anyway. A number of other Hezbollah accounts are also on the list.
Terrorists and sanctioned organizations on the platform
But Al-Saadi Qadhafi also managed to secure a blue checkmark after Twitter became X. He is the son of now-defunct Libyan dictator Moammar Qadhafi.
But it’s not just individuals on the list. Several groups also just managed to score a blue checkmark. These include Ansarallah, or the Houthis from Yemen. The group now strafing ships with missiles in the Red Sea.
Another notable name on the list is Press TV. This organization even managed to get a gold check mark on X, which means they pay $1,000 a month for it. Press TV is a propaganda channel of the Iranian government. The account still exists, only now the gold checkmark seems to have disappeared. A number of other Iranian media also managed to get a checkmark on X.
That these accounts manage to get a blue or gold checkmark means that something is going well wrong in X’s verification of them, if that verification is done at all.
This is what X thinks of all the fuss
According to TTP, most of these accounts were only verified after Elon Musk took over Twitter and renamed it X. The platform was asked for clarification by TTP, but received zero response.
Later, X did issue a brief statement on its own platform. The company claims to have a robust and secure approach to its functions, meeting legal obligations. “Several accounts mentioned in the report are not directly named on sanctions lists, while others may have visible account checkmarks without receiving sanctioned services,” the company wrote in the statement.
So since X actually claims to be doing nothing wrong, all of the listed accounts did suddenly have a blue or gold checkmark removed. Why would the former Twitter do that when it says it has nothing wrong with them?
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However, if anything becomes clear after this investigation, it’s that you shouldn’t just trust blue checkmarks anymore. Anyone can buy them (even terrorists) and there is little control over them. So it’s not like the old Twitter, where the verification process was a lot trickier.