A hodgepodge of Twitter’s worst individuals were sporting shiny blue check marks on Friday, including notorious punching bag and literal neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, thanks to the ill-conceived money grab of the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk. In addition to Spencer, who’s argued on behalf of turning the U.S. into a white ethnostate, Musk’s new blue check marks are being donned by major transphobic accounts like Libs of TikTok, which has baselessly accused LGBTQ people of being pedophiles and has been tied to waves of harassment aimed at hospitals providing medical care to transgender kids and teens. (Children’s hospitals around the country have reported bomb threats and other acts of intimidation in the wake of the account naming them.) Gays Against Groomers, one of the most prominent accounts attacking the parents of transgender children online, has faced multiple suspensions on Twitter for hate speech. But its account now, too, bears one of Musk’s badges. In late October, the account thanked Musk directly for helping further its anti-trans agenda. The blue check marks were previously employed to prevent users from being duped by accounts impersonating celebrities, brands, and government officials, among others. Now, however, a blue check mark is part of an $US8 ($11) per month subscription to Twitter Blue, available to anyone with a credit card, though some users have spotted a vacancy where the subscription options used to be in Twitter’s menu. Musk, whose acquisition saddled the company with $US13 ($18) billion in debt, has said that users purchasing the badges will eventually attain greater visibility on the platform. Speaking to advertisers on Wednesday, he compared tweets from users without them to emails ending up in a “spam folder.” Also now “verified” is Jason Kessler, the white supremacist who organised the Unite the Right rally that ended with murder of counterprotester Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal. Like Spencer, Twitter had previously verified Kessler in 2017 — after he referred to Heyer as a “fat, disgusting Communist” whose murder he called “payback time.”
via gizmodo: Elon Is Re-Verifying Neo-Nazis and Selling Blue Checks to Transphobes and QAnoners