Multiple Verified Twitter Accounts Leaked ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie,’ ‘Avatar’ Over The Weekend

The Super Mario Bros. Movie just finished another historic week at the box office, but all was not right in the Mushroom Kingdom as the full film was posted on Twitter for several hours over the weekend.

What happened? On April 28, a rip of the entire The Super Mario Bros. Movie was posted by the account Twilight Sparkly (@OMGitssAshley) to Twitter in two parts. The videos were then reposted by the account vids that go hard (@vidsthatgohard) on August 30 and stayed up for several hours.

How many people saw the movie on Twitter? There’s no way to tell how many people watched some or all of the film, but more than nine million accounts had at least seen the tweet from vids that go hard before Twitter took it down. The account has since been suspended.

How did this happen? Mario was uploaded to Twitter thanks to the new functionality of the platform’s paid verification system. Users who pay for Twitter Blue can now upload hour-long HD-quality videos and apparently, there aren’t strong filtering processes to prevent copyrighted material from being posted. In fact, Avatar: The Way of Water was also posted to Twitter in three parts on Saturday evening on a verified blue account.

Why didn’t someone at Twitter take it down sooner? The Mario Bros. leak feels like a direct result of Twitter dissolving its Trust and Safety Council and firing most of its compliance teams after the company changed hands last year. With fewer checks and balances than before Elon Musk purchased the company, it only makes sense that cracks are starting to show.

What did the leak mean for the movie? The Mario Bros. leak doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact on the film’s box office success, as Illumination’s latest crossed the $1 billion mark on Sunday. That said, Universal Pictures and Nintendo probably aren’t too happy with Twitter right now.