April Fool’s Day is just around the corner and tech companies are ready with their rhetorical methods to woo users. It’s also the time when people play pranks online to make fools of their friends. This time Twitter users have sought out a new prank where they are changing their birth year to become ‘underage’ on the microblogging platform. But Twitter has some directions that might not end well for these pranksters.
The prank is to change the birth year to 2007 on Twitter, which apparently unlocks features such as new profile colour themes, admin privileges, and also the blue tick that denotes a Twitter-verified profile. Many users have been jumping on the bandwagon to join others in this prank but Twitter is taking punitive steps to crack down on this rampage.
The official handle of Twitter Support acknowledged the prank and said that changing birth year to 2007 will reflect 13 years of age, which serves as a parameter for the profile debarring. “We’ve noticed a prank trying to get people to change their Twitter birthday in their profile to 2007 to unlock new colour schemes. Please don’t do this. You’ll get locked out for being under 13 years old,” wrote Twitter Support on Tuesday.
While the company has not shared if there are any profiles that have been locked after the birth year was changed, the company is asking the affected users to reach out to Twitter Support with eligible proof of age, such as government-issued identity card.
It is also not clear where the prank originated from. Twitter has not mentioned anything related to the prank in the tweet. Since the advisory, many Twitter users are expressing their concern and requesting others to avoid falling for the prank.
April Fool’s Day is that one time of the year when major companies, including Google and Uber, trick users into services, names, and products that are practically not viable, at least not all of a sudden. Last year, Google said it has launched Google Cloud Hummus API to make the process of preparing hummus a worldwide phenomenon with the help of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. Twitter has not really played any prank on April Fool’s Day so far but it is a large medium for companies to befool their customers.

Source: financialexpress.com