Elon Musk’s X says it is launching a crackdown on “parody” accounts.
The site has an exemption for accounts that impersonate other people if they are labelled as doing so for comedy. But, often, that loophole is used by scammers who pretend to be other famous users in an attempt to trick people into scams or amplifying their content.
X has been struggling with such accounts since soon after Mr Musk bought the platform, when it was still known as Twitter.
One of his first decisions was to remove the “verified” badges that until then had been used to show that an account really belonged to who it claimed to, and allow people to pay for the small blue checkmarks. That allowed anyone to change their name and picture to that of another account and made it relatively easy to impersonate other users.
Soon after, the site introduced a ban on accounts claiming to be other users, but left a loophole for those parody accounts, apparently in keeping with Musk’s claimed commitment to freedom of speech and comedy. Those accounts were required to make clear that they were parody accounts – but many simply put the message indicating so at the end of their name, and character limits mean that it did not often show clearly.
That has allowed many users to pose as Elon Musk and conduct cryptocurrency scams and other misleading behaviour. A recent post that claimed to be by him and asked users to like a comment for a chance to win a Tesla has been interacted with hundreds of thousands of times.
Now, X says that those parody accounts will be required to add keywords at the front of their name and will no longer be able to use the same pictures of the accounts they “depict”.
“These changes are designed to help users better understand the unaffiliated nature of PCF accounts and reduce the risk of confusion or impersonation,” the company said. We encourage all affected accounts to update their profiles before the enforcement date.”
The new rules will go into effect on 10 April.
