Faced with a proliferation of impersonated accounts, Twitter reintroduced an “official” badge to certify certain profiles on Friday, Nov. 11, and suspended its paid authentication system.
Faced with the proliferation of spoofed accounts, Twitter vaguely reintroduced an “official” badge to certify certain profiles on Friday, November 11, and suspended its paid authentication system. “To combat identity theft, we’ve added an official logo to some accounts”, explained the influential platform purchased on October 28 by Elon Musk for a pittance of 44 billion dollars. This gray colored logo has appeared under the profile of many advertisers and also, briefly, on the @Twitter account.
It was first introduced to the social network on Wednesday but was quickly busted by its new strongman, who also owns Tesla and SpaceX. Elon Musk has been pushing since his arrival at the head of Twitter for the establishment of another authentication system, billed almost 8 dollars a month. “Twitter Blue” allows anyone to get the blue check for authenticity, which until now was reserved for organizations and individuals with a certain reputation. But its introduction this week in the US was accompanied by an explosion of accounts posing as celebrities or large companies.
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Fake LeBron James or Joe Biden tweeted on behalf of basketball star or US president. Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly had to apologize Thursday after a successful tweet from an account in his name, with the blue check mark, promising free insulin. On Friday, it did not seem possible to sign up for “Twitter Blue” on the site or via the mobile application. An internal note, published by some US media, says that the service has been suspended “to solve usurpation problems”.
Since buying Twitter, Elon Musk has fired half of his 7,500 employees and launched several military projects, including the redesign of paid subscriptions. “Please note that Twitter will do a lot of stupid things in the coming months. We will keep what works and change what doesn’t.”, warned the billionaire. However, the US competition agency (FTC) sent him a rare warning on Thursday evening. “We are following recent developments on Twitter with great concern. No CEO or company is above the law”said one of his spokesmen.
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