The case of social media verifying fake accounts or bots is happening again. This time it was Facebook's turn to accidentally give a blue tick to a fake account pretending to be Elon Musk.
The account is actually Elon Musk's fan page which has 153,000 followers. Now the fan page has disappeared, either because it was deleted by Facebook or the account owner.
At least the owner of the page admits that they are just a fan page. In its About section, the account wrote: "This is a fanpage, uploading tweets and more from it."
But the URL used is also suspicious, namely facebook[.]com/ElonMuskoffici, which indicates that they are trying to pretend to be Elon Musk's official page.
The page was not originally created as a fan page for Elon Musk. In the Page Transparency tab, which shows a history of account information, the page was created on July 28, 2019 under the name Kizito Gavin.
The page then changed its name up to six times in 2021 alone, and most recently changed its name to Elon Musk on October 17, 2021. Information on the Page Transparency tab also revealed that the person managing the account was in Egypt, whereas Musk currently lives in Texas, United States.
Before disappearing, the account posted 11 posts and most of Musk's tweets were re-uploaded. His last post promoting a suspicious Bitcoin giveaway was deleted not long after, as quoted from Engadget, Tuesday (2/11/2021).
It is not known when Facebook verified the fake page. Even though Facebook already has account verification rules, namely the account owner must fill out a form and provide proof of identity such as a driver's license, passport, proof of tax payments, and others.
Verification is indeed a big problem for social media platforms. For example, Twitter, which recently brought back its verification program after a four-year absence, but not long after that they gave blue ticks to a number of bot accounts.
