Twitter now has Affiliate badges to fight brand impersonation
In mid-November, Elon Musk said that Twitter was working on a feature that would allow brands and organizations to identify accounts associated with them. A month later, the company began implementing this feature. As first spotted by social media consultant (and former Next Web reporter) Matt Navarra, Twitter has added a new “Affiliate” badge that can appear next to an account ID checkmark.
Musk first announced the feature the same week Twitter made its first failed attempt to implement paid account verification. After the company began signing up users to its revamped Twitter Blue subscription, verified trolls used the service to impersonate brands and celebrities. The situation has become a real nightmare for companies such as Eli Lilly. A pharmaceutical company lost billions of dollars when a fake “verified” account misled people into believing the company would make insulin free.