Dan Evon, senior manager of education design at the non-profit News Literacy Project, said people can always "perform a logic check."
"Many of these impostor accounts are posting overtly inflammatory messages," Evon said. "If the account is posting something newsworthy, has it made the news?"
Twitter, which did not respond to an AFP inquiry, has rules against misleading and deceptive identities. Musk tweeted Sunday that "any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying 'parody' will be permanently suspended."
But the problem remains.
"It has simply become more difficult to determine credibility on the platform," said Gordon Pennycook, a behavioral scientist at the University of Regina.
Brian Whelan, who created a fake Donald Trump account, told AFP the process was quick.
"I rebranded an old account in less than five minutes, got the verification immediately using a Revolut card in my own name, then was able to use the account for two hours," said Whelan, head of video and social at the London-based Times Radio.
Other copycat accounts used paid badges to pretend to be lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the video game company Nintendo, and Twitter itself.
The new ease of obtaining a blue badge makes media literacy more crucial than ever, as the new system could open the door to disinformation from accounts posing as government leaders and agencies, health officials, weather channels, financial advisors and more.
"This change opens so many possibilities for bad actors that it's going to be difficult for fact-checkers to keep up," Evon added.
