X Rolls Out In-Stream Labels for Parody and Fan Accounts

After you test them over the past few weeksX has now officially launched its new Account tags “parody”.which aims to reduce confusion about what is being shared and who is sharing in the app.

As you can see in this example, the Xa parody account markers will reduce impersonation and misinformation in the app, ensuring that users are aware that this is not an official or real profile of a celebrity or brand.

Which could also be solved by, you know, not selling control tags to anyone willing to pay. But that ship had already sailed, returned to the pier and set sail again.

As he explained X:

“We are introducing profile tags for parody accounts to clearly differentiate these types of accounts and their content on our platform. We designed these labels to increase transparency and ensure that users are not fooled into thinking that such accounts belong to the entity being parodied.”

X says its parody tags will be applied to posts and accounts on X “to clearly show the source of the content you’re seeing.”

“We will soon share details on when the tag will become mandatory for parody accounts. These accounts, like all accounts on X, must still adhere to the X Rules – specifically our authenticity policy.”

So the new tags will be mandatory for any profile that could be mistaken for another, to ensure that it is clear that the information posted by those profiles does not actually come from the entity they may be impersonating.

Which should weed out a lot of misrepresentation and ensure that less brand and/or celebrity impersonation is used to trick X users into, say, investing in some crypto scam or announcing a product update.

Which have become quite common in the app, both in paid ads and regular posts. The new policy will ideally ensure that more such profiles are reported and resolved, but even then, bad actors are likely to still take risks and occasionally slip past X’s detection measures.

But overall, phishing should become less of a problem with these new regulations in place, which will benefit X users.

As such, it’s a nice addition, though again, it feels like putting a Band-Aid on the problem caused by X starting selling confirmation tags in the first place.

Parody X account tags are now active iOS, Android and web.