Elon Musk gets Twitter’s blue tick verification shock, beats retreat

Twitter Inc’s new CEO Elon Musk has suspended the recently announced $8 blue check subscription service due to the shocking recent increase in the number of fake accounts on the social networking platform. Musk has also brought back the ‘official’ badge to some Twitter users. It can be known that Twitter’s blue check mark was used to denote a verified account and was previously mostly reserved for famous personalities like accounts of politicians, journalists, and other public figures.

However, with the announcement of the $8 subscription option, it became easier for any Twitter user to get a verified blue tick mark added to their account. Musk had rolled out the subscription based blue tick mark earlier this week to help Twitter grow revenue. According to Reuters, several users reported on Friday that the new subscription option for the blue verification check mark had disappeared, while a source informed that the offering has been dropped. Twitter has not yet commented on the same.

Fake accounts purporting to be big brands have popped up with the blue check since the new roll-out, including Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX, as well as Roblox, Nestle and Lockheed Martin, Reuters said in a report. “To combat impersonation, we’ve added an ‘Official’ label to some accounts,” Twitter’s support account – which has the official tag – tweeted on Friday. It can be known that the official label was originally introduced on Wednesday, but killed by Musk just hours later.

Musk also tweeted and said that Twitter users engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying it as a “parody” account would be permanently suspended without a warning.

This is not the only change Musk introduced or brought to Twitter after acquiring the social media platform. As the very first move, after taking over Twitter, Musk fired the top officials including board and senior executives of the social networking platform and later nearly half of Twitter’s workforce. He also raised the prospect of Twitter’s bankruptcy.

According to a report, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Thursday said it was watching Twitter with “deep concern.”