On Twitter, Who Needs a Check Mark When You Can Have a Rat?

Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, wants $8. After buying Twitter in a $44 billion deal just last week, he now wants users to pay up if they want their account emblazoned with the platform’s signature blue check mark. (Currently, the check mark denotes a verified account.) Many users who are verified at present met the development with a laugh. The web comic artist Alex Cohen thinks a rat emoji makes for a fine, and free, alternative instead.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Mr. Musk derided what he called “Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark.” Twitter Blue, he added, would come with perks like limited ads, the ability to bypass some publisher paywalls and “priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam.” The blue check mark would come along with membership. (There is debate over whether the Twitter check mark is blue or white among some Twitter users, since the check mark itself is, technically, typically white.) “Power to the people! Blue for $8/month,” he wrote.

In response, Mr. Cohen, a 26-year-old political science graduate student at the University of California, Davis, tweeted his idea for an alternative to paying for Twitter verification. “Why would i pay $8 to get a blue check if i could put a rat next to my name for free??? i’m calling on everyone to join me in becoming #RatVerified,” Mr. Cohen wrote on Tuesday. He added a rat emoji to his display name on Twitter and encouraged other users to do the same. The tweet has since been liked 138,000 times and counting, and retweeted more than 17,000 times.

“I’m not a big fan of Elon Musk and I don’t think it’s good someone can buy one of the most important websites for political and journalism purposes and then just change it and make it function completely differently without oversight,” Mr. Cohen said in a phone interview on Friday.

Twitter’s verification system was initially rolled out to help prevent impersonation on the platform. It was debuted in 2009, inspired by someone posing as Shaquille O’Neal. The Twitter account for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was the first to receive the distinction.

Since then, the check mark has become a somewhat contentious symbol. For public figures, including celebrities and journalists, it is a way to confirm that users are in fact who they claim to be. But to other users, the check mark has become a status symbol, unfairly reserved for a select group. It’s a sentiment Mr. Musk, with his feudalist metaphor, appears to share. (Full disclosure: I have a check mark, obtained for me years ago by an employer. Is it dorky? Yes. Does it help me do my job more efficiently? Also yes.)

Twitter said it was suspending new verifications in 2017 after it verified Jason Kessler, a well-known white supremacist who used the platform to organize the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. The company quietly continued to verify accounts and ultimately reintroduced a new verification system in 2021.

Since the purchase became official, Mr. Musk has made a number of changes. He has fired top executives and initiated companywide layoffs, announced that he’s creating a content moderation council and reportedly floated the idea of reviving the beloved short-form video app Vine. (For an inside view of what it’s been like to work at Twitter this week, “Hard Fork” has a great episode talking to two employees.)

Mr. Cohen said he tried and failed to get verified multiple times. He is the artist behind Tiny Snek Comics, which he describes on Twitter as “comics about tiny animals and political justice.” (He has about 77,000 followers on Twitter and more than a quarter-million followers on Instagram.)

Mr. Musk’s tweets about allowing all users to pay for verification particularly frustrated Mr. Cohen. Allowing anybody to be verified seemed to defeat the very reason verification was created in the first place, he said. “I have had, on multiple occasions, spam accounts pretend to be me,” Mr. Cohen said. “Try and do fake giveaways and get people to give away their credit card info. It takes a lot of effort if you’re not verified to get those accounts removed and there’s a lot of danger from people falling for those scams.”

“I’ve never been, like, very upset that I don’t have it,” Mr. Cohen said of verification. “I don’t really care about it as, like, a badge of honor. But from a practical standpoint, that’s why this exists. That’s why this was created: to prevent people from being scammed.”

By Wednesday, #RatVerified hit the No. 1 trending spot on Twitter in the United States, Mr. Cohen said. Newsweek wrote about the hashtag and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals capitalized on the moment, tweeting to ask users support a rat-related cause. Some users are also upset he didn’t use the hashtag #ratified, Mr. Cohen added. Searching for the rat emoji on Twitter, you’ll find a small but growing community of people who have #RatVerified themselves.

“I think there is kind of a nice symbolism with the rat,” Mr. Cohen said. “If you kind of think about Twitter as, like, the sewer of the internet, we’re all the rats roaming around in the sewer. I’m not going to pay $8 to get elevated above the other rats. I’m going to stay down in the muck.”

Mr. Cohen said he was deeply concerned that the verification changes might lead to an increased number of impersonators and spam accounts on the platform, particularly with regards to politicians and elections. (In a recent meeting with leaders from several civil rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and the N.A.A.C.P., Mr. Musk said he would not change policies until after the midterm elections were over. )

On Twitter, if users change their avatar photo and display name — this is different from a user’s Twitter handle, the name that begins with an @ — it’s already fairly easy to trick other Twitter users into believing an account is the official account of a celebrity or organization. The comedian Jaboukie Young-White was notably suspended from Twitter in 2020 after impersonating CNN and tweeting a sex joke about Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a candidate for president.

In recent days, some Twitter users have begun impersonating Mr. Musk using this method. (This is not a new thing, but Mr. Musk’s new role at Twitter appears to have inspired more copycats apparently eager to push the boundaries of his free speech vision.) When asked by another Twitter user about his impersonators, Mr. Musk wrote it “already happens very frequently.” “If verified accounts violate terms of service, eg spam/scam/impersonation, they’ll be suspended, but Twitter will keep their money!,” he added.

Mr. Cohen is staying on Twitter for now, but he’s watching the platform’s ecosystem closely.

Celebrities including Shonda Rhimes, Sara Bareilles and Toni Braxton have all announced they are leaving. “Hate speech under the veil of ‘free speech’ is unacceptable; therefore I am choosing to stay off Twitter as it is no longer a safe space for myself, my sons and other POC,” Ms. Braxton tweeted last Friday.

“I dont know Elon Musk and, tbh, I could care less who owns twitter,” LeBron James tweeted on Saturday, linking to a report about a spike in hate speech after Mr. Musk’s takeover of Twitter. “But I will say that if this is true, I hope he and his people take this very seriously because this is scary AF.” (On Monday, Yoel Roth, the head of safety and integrity at Twitter, acknowledged a recent “surge in hateful content.”)

“Large exodus happening on this platform,” the actor Josh Gad tweeted last Friday. “Not sure if I stay or not. Leaning toward staying, but if today is a sign of things to come, not sure what the point is. Freedom of speech is great. Hate speech intended to incite harm, (with no consequences) ain’t what I signed up for.” His most recent tweet, posted on Friday, appeared to mock Elon Musk.

It remains to be seen if the much-discussed exodus from Twitter will actually come to pass. To find out, of course, you’ll have to check in with the rats — on Twitter.

It Happened Online is a column in which we explain very particular bits of news enabled and amplified by social media.