Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Monday tweeted that the company is halting the relaunch of ‘Twitter Blue’ until there is high confidence in “stopping impersonation.” Just a week before it was announced, Twitter Blue, a $7.99 subscription service offering a blue check along with some other added features, will be relaunched on November 29. Musk rolled out the subscription earlier this month, however, they pulled it in a few days after several fake accounts with verification came up.
Further in his tweet, Musk also said that the micro-blogging platform “will probably use different color checks for organizations than individuals.” After the initial rollout of Twitter Blue, the company began testing a grey “official” label beneath high-profile accounts.
The new Twitter Blue was launched a week after Musk’s takeover earlier this month led to chaos on the platform as both legacy checkmarks and the new Twitter Blue subscriptions were active. Several accounts impersonated other accounts, both with the checkmark. A user created a fake Nintendo account and posted an image of Mario flipping the bird while some other user impersonated the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and posted a tweet saying that insulin is now free. Eventually, Twitter ended up rolling back the feature.
Just a couple of days after acquiring Twitter for $44 billion, Elon Musk aspired to end the “lord and peasant” on Twitter who are or aren’t verified on Twitter. He said now any user can buy a blue verified checkmark with the revamped Twitter Blue subscription. Musk, the world’s richest man, has also marketed the new feature as a bot and spam remedy. He also touted his brainchild as a new revenue stream that the company could use to award content creators.
In just a few weeks after Musk’s takeover, Twitter has been hit by a massive wave of changes. First, top executives like the CEO and CFO were sacked, then around 50 percent of the company’s employees were laid off, and now the structure of the micro-blogging platform that appealed to millions of its users is undergoing a chaotic overhaul.
