NEWSGUARD MISINFORMATION MONITOR 'Verified'

Elon Musk's Twitter is giving legitimacy to dozens of influential misinformers

- MACRINA WANG, VALERIE PAVILONIS, ZACK FISHMAN and JACK BREWSTER

TWITTER'S "BLUE CHECK" USED TO SIGNAL author authenticity. Now, it's a way for peddlers of misinformation to appear trustworthy.

Dozens of well-known purveyors of misinformation-many of whom were only recently allowed back onto the platform-are paying $8 a month for a blue check through Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk's new verification system called Twitter Blue, lending them an air of legitimacy as the platform's relaxed moderation standards allow them to spread false narratives at scale.

NewsGuard analyzed the Twitter activity between March 1 and March 7, 2023, of 25 misinformation superspreader accounts that were "verified" by Twitter Blue. Each of the 25 accounts analyzed by NewsGuard had at least 50,000 followers and was either affiliated with a website that NewsGuard has assessed as having spread false information or found to have spread a prominent false narrative included in NewsGuard's proprietary Misinformation Fingerprints database, which provides detailed debunking of false narratives. NewsGuard found that the 25 accounts cumulatively posted 141 tweets (original and quote tweets) containing false, misleading and unsubstantiated claims.

These tweets were viewed nearly 27 million times and received more than 760,000 likes and retweets during this period, the NewsGuard analysis determined. The 25 accounts also cumulatively retweeted 35 posts containing misinformation, bringing the total number of tweets and retweets identified by NewsGuard for advancing false, misleading or unsubstantiated information to 176.

Out of those 25 accounts, 10 were reinstated under Musk after being suspended under Twitter's previous ownership.