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Twitter UX nightmare: verification immolation

The chaotic rollout of Twitter’s new verification program proves a stunning example of bad UX design

Robert Stribley
UX Collective
5 min readNov 11, 2022

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Image of a larger blue bird standing over a fire containing what looks like several of the blue Twitter bird logos — created via MidJourney
Image via MidJourney prompt

After pausing the release to avoid disrupting the U.S. midterm elections, Twitter launched their new verification system on Wednesday: Anyone willing to pay 8 bucks a month for Twitter Blue would now receive the long coveted (by some) “blue check mark,” which, of course, is actually a white check mark against a blue background.

The rollout has been an unmitigated disaster.

People began signing up for the service immediately, yes, but went on to impersonate celebrities, politicians, and corporations. People like Donald Trump and Lebron James, companies like Nintendo and Twitter itself.

Today, day two of the rollout, the fiasco continued.

Early this afternoon, for example, a rogue account—looking pretty authentic with the handle @EliLillyandCo—tweeted a short message with huge impact: “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.”

Screenshot of a tweet from the fake Eli lilly account with the message, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.”

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Published in UX Collective

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Written by Robert Stribley

Writer. Photographer. UXer. Creative Director. Interests: immigration, privacy, human rights, design. UX: Technique. Teach: SVA. Aussie/American. He/him.

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