A viral prank on Twitter has gone so far the company itself is warning users not to participate. A series of tweets have encouraged users to change their Twitter birthdays to 2007 to unlock hidden color schemes in the Twitter app…
Essentially, the tweets in question say that if you change the birthday on your Twitter profile to any day in 2007, you will unlock a new color scheme in the Twitter app. In actuality, what this does is completely lock you out of your Twitter account.
Twitter requires that everyone on the platform be at least 13 years old. When you change your Twitter birthday to 2007, you are essentially saying you are 12 years old, and therefore too young to be on Twitter. Your account is then automatically locked.
Twitter will then require you go through the painstaking process of providing your age. To do this, you’ll have to contact customer support with a copy of your government-issued ID, proving that you’re at least 13-years-old, as The Verge notes.
Twitter warned users of the prank from the Twitter Support account:
Of course, several different variants of this prank have since popped up. Some tweets say you’ll get a secret color, others say your account will become verified or gain “admin privileges,” and more.
This sort of viral prank is easy to fall for, especially when some social networks do require you to jump through several hoops to unlock “hidden features.” For instance, Facebook required that you send a moon emoji to someone to unlock the hidden Dark Mode in Messenger. This Twitter prank, of course, ultimately comes down to doing some simple math.
We’ve noticed a prank trying to get people to change their Twitter birthday in their profile to 2007 to unlock new color schemes. Please don’t do this. You’ll get locked out for being under 13 years old.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) March 26, 2019
If your account was locked after changing your Twitter birthday to 2007, please follow the instructions that were sent after the change was made to your account.
