Twitter has given a gold tick to Britain First, the far right political organisation, after a shake-up of its verification system under new owner Elon Musk.
The party’s leader, Paul Golding, has also received a blue tick for his account, which means that his posts will be boosted in conversations and will be ranked higher in user searches. Golding was jailed in 2018 for religiously aggravated harassment.
Twitter’s gold tick designates a verified organisation that is a business or non-profit entity, according to the platform’s website. Twitter is charging UK entities £1,140 a month for official gold tick status, while personal accounts are being charged £9.60 for a blue tick.
Britain First, whose policies include prison terms for “any attempt to alter the demographic makeup of the British Isles”, had its account suspended in 2017, but it was allowed back on to the platform after Musk’s takeover last year.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a campaign group, accused Twitter of promoting extreme content to drive controversy and user engagement with the aim of generating more revenue.
“Twitter is now a topsy-turvy world where users have been told to ignore information supplied by good, reliable actors and pay undue attention to the bottom-feeders who want to spread hate, misinformation and sow division,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH. “It’s harder and harder to know what to trust on the platform, while bad actors are put on a pedestal.”
The Britain First account has 12,700 followers and Golding’s has 45,300.
Twitter’s new paid-for verification system encountered more difficulties on Monday as the platform gave a gold tick to a fake Disney account, in the latest example of rogue actors launching “approved” parodies.
An account with the handle @DisneyJuniorUK secured a gold tick on Monday morning. The account was suspended at 11.30am BST, but not before announcing that the cult animation series South Park was “officially heading to Disney Junior”.
It was not clear whether the holder of the account – which had 2,087 followers – paid the $1,000-a-month cost for the tick or was given it for free. This has been happening with blue ticks for large personal accounts following the launch of a cull last week for legacy accounts that had not paid for verification.
However, the account holder indicated surprise at receiving a tick on Monday, tweeting “No fucking way” and “This isn’t actually real right”. The user that claimed to be running the fake Disney account, @7virtues_, had tweeted a poll on Monday asking whether to deactivate the account “so I don’t get murked by the Disney hitmen”.
Twitter’s previous attempt at charging for verification under new owner Elon Musk was pulled in November last year after the opportunity to pay for a verified account was hijacked by pranksters.
A fake account representing pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly – which had paid for verification – announced free insulin, while the gaming firm Nintendo and the pope were among the other victims of impersonators.
The impersonation issue was one of the drivers behind a fall in advertising revenue on Twitter since Musk’s October 2022 takeover. Advertising accounted for 90% of Twitter’s $5bn in annual revenue before the deal, and Musk revealed in February that he expects turnover at the company to be less than $3bn this year, suggesting a slump in its ad business.
Disney declined to comment. It is understood that Disney, which stopped broadcasting the Disney Junior UK channel in 2020 and pulled the related Twitter handle at the same time, had contacted Twitter on Monday morning as soon at it was made aware of the account.
A request for comment from Twitter’s press office on the Britain First and Disney Junior UK accounts was met with an automatically generated poo emoji, as is now standard for all journalistic queries directed at the company.
