Ice-T still has his blue check on Twitter since Elon Musk implemented Twitter Blue, a paid subscription that allows you to access special features. Still, the West Coast legend has found the need to speak out about fake profiles and fake accounts.
Musk took over as CEO after buying Twitter in an acquisition deal worth $44 billion last October. The Tesla co-founder quickly made changes to the social media platform, including removing the blue check from verified accounts while giving any account a blue check that paid a monthly fee of $8, and many worried that the new policy would result in fraudulent accounts, including for artists such as Ice-T.
Earlier this week, Ice-T took to Twitter to warn his 1.9 million followers that someone was impersonating him on the platform after an account with the handle @patriciamUNITE questioned why people make up fake accounts.
“Another fake ass profile ICE. That s*itz corny af! Real knows Real so of course I spotted it lol,” the user wrote.
Ice-T reshared the tweet, adding his own caption that read, “Patricia, I have no idea why MFs do this… Then they try to scam money from people. Smh.”
One fan didn’t catch on and asked why a millionaire would request money from people, leading another to note that the recording artist retweeted the fake account.
“The ‘real’ ICE T RT’d the imposter ICE T,” wrote that person, which may have prompted Ice-T to take down his now-deleted tweet.
The new Twitter CEO also has allowed hate speech to flourish on the platform after reactivating the accounts of several neo-Nazis and Donald Trump.
When Musk first announced the blue check subscription, the “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” actor took to Twitter over rumors of Musk’s new verification policy spread on social media.
“I heard Twitter is gonna take away the Blue checkmarks if you don’t pay,” he wrote. “F—k that checkmark… I guess it matters to some people.”
It’s unclear if Ice-T has actually paid for his blue, but a few other celebrity accounts still have blue verification checks, including LeBron James. He tweeted that he wouldn’t pay for it, but later Musk revealed that he was paying for a few celebrity blue checks himself.
According to Mashable, blue checkmarks have been removed from 420,000 accounts, including the one for actress Halle Berry. The Game, Ciara and Oprah Winfrey also had their checks removed, but they have now appeared in the last few weeks. Its unclear who’s footing the bill: the account holder or Musk.
