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Comment by johnnyanmac | Hacker News Reader

That's pretty much the only upside to that blue checkmark these days. Making anyone able to buy one was a huge mistake, but they will at least do the minium check to see if someone else with that name already has a checkmark.

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I was given a blue checkmark by pre-Musk Twitter because of the cryptocurrency scams. It was taken away in the early days of Musk Twitter when verification meant “anyone with $8.” Ironically, it was forced back against my will and without my paying for it, because Musk was embarrassed that larger accounts didn’t have checks. Obviously it didn’t serve any useful anti-impersonation purposes at that point, but I got free “Grok” I guess?

Is this a thing? Why would it be? Look at my username - how many people with that name exist in the world?

Only one of us can have a blue check on Twitter? Which one?

Will they? I'd actually be surprised if there are many people that, upon receiving a suspicious message from someone who claims to be Joe Schmoe, will actually go and check to see if a different account from Joe Schmoe with a blue check. I think it's much more likely that they're either going to recognize it as a scam right away, or they won't and they'll fall for it. In either of those cases, it doesn't help for the blue-checkmark-holder to keep their account.

There will always be someone falling for scams. No amount of safeguards will protect them if they do zero due diligence and the scammer is persistent enough. The checkmark isn't an end-all-be-all, but it's another small step someone can use to verify without too much hassle.

also, I just noticed "they" is ambiguous here. I meant "the twitter staff giving checkmarks". At least I hope they do some basic check before handing out a checkmark to an obvious impersonator.

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