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The verified badge on Twitter merely lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic, a Twitter spokesperson says.
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SOUNDCLOUD BOT BLACKHATWORLD VERIFICATION
The verification feature on Facebook and Instagram is for brands, organisations and public figures who the tech platforms “know to be at risk of impersonation or consider to be in the public interest”. Their posts attracted comments from a lot of blue-tick accounts that, on digging deeper, turned out to be dubious too. They all had an Instagram Story about their press coverage pinned on their profiles. Thousands of followers, but very few posts. Soon, a pattern started to emerge among most of these undeservedly verified accounts. One had over 213,000 followers for 136 posts whereas the other had over 45,000 followers with a grand total of two posts on that account. Speaking of rabbit holes, we discovered both the now-unverified accounts interacting with each other on their Instagram posts. Khan had gone down this rabbit hole out of sheer curiosity recently. "Given how we are seriously pursuing business, it would have been counterproductive," he adds. "It puts you at risk of losing your verification at any point in time," says Khan, co-founder of UAE-based apparel company, YourLibaas. "Additionally, we’d like to reiterate that we will never request payment for verification or reach out to ask you to confirm your verification."įor this reason, Akram Tariq Khan has refrained from obtaining a blue tick via inauthentic means. “We will take action against those accounts that violate our community guidelines, as and when reported,” a Facebook company spokesperson told ET. Two such users made changes to their bio within 12 hours of ET reaching out to them, inquiring about their blue ticks. Users then disingenuously flaunt this branded content as actual press coverage, which these platforms seem to have missed while screening a verification request.ĭuring its investigation, ET spotted several verified accounts on Instagram where these blue- ticked users bragged about being featured in well-known publications on their profiles and posted screenshots of the coverage even though they were clearly sponsored posts.
SOUNDCLOUD BOT BLACKHATWORLD OFFLINE
Next, they help publish sponsored posts for the user across a bunch of online and offline publications. They beef up a user’s follower count and engagement numbers using social media automation tools like which help in buying multiple bot accounts to follow a user, among other things. It is the “notable” feature that the manipulators primarily use to their advantage. While listing the three broad parameters - authentic, active, notable - that most social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram use to give out a blue tick, they also specify that it should be a highly searched account or featured in multiple news sources. With micro-blogging platform Twitter recently unveiling plans to resume its verification process which it had paused in 2017, these numbers are likely to go up, the experts said. (Note: An earlier version of this story said that "Industry experts are potentially pegging the size of the fake verification industry at Rs 3,000 crore in India alone." It has been rectified for clarity. Industry experts estimate that these individuals and agencies could be getting at least 1 million annual queries for buying a blue tick, potentially representing Rs 3,000 crore worth of business queries.