The establishment of verified NFT profiles on Twitter has fueled the debate between supporters and detractors of digital art.
NFTs are referred to as “investment fraud” by a plugin developer
Twitter has launched a new feature that allows NFT owners to instantly validate their ownership of the digital art piece when they use it as their profile image. While many NFT enthusiasts applauded the functionality, emphasizing how it genuinely demonstrates the strength of digital authenticity certificates, critics were not amused by Twitter’s move.
One open-source developer, mcclure, even published a browser plugin on her Github account that automatically excludes all Twitter users that use verified NFT profile images, branding digital art NFTs an “investment scam.” The readme file that comes with the plugin states, in addition to mentioning the environmental impact of NFTs and the myriad scams and art theft schemes that exist within the NFT market:
In short, NFT users are vexing to be around. People who purchased NFTs must continue to entice others to purchase NFTs, or the NFTs they purchased will lose value. Sockpuppet accounts, dogpiling, and indistinguishable monkey clones abound in Twitter NFT cliques. Blocking NFT users merely makes Twitter more pleasant.
Musk is also not amused
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, also commented on the new Twitter function in his customary succinct fashion. He contends that Twitter would be better served by focusing its resources on addressing the plethora of spambots that swamp the network with bogus giveaway frauds.
To make matters worse, the new functionality does not appear to be functioning properly. According to Mashable, Twitter does not check if an NFT collection is confirmed. As a result, it is still feasible to right-click an NFT, utilize the image file to create a fake NFT, and obtain one of Twitter’s coveted hexagon profile images for free.
