San Francisco (AP) – Twitter has suspended the ability to purchase a verification tick with subscription payments after a spate of fake accounts of brands and celebrities. The subscription should likely become available again late next week, new Twitter owner Elon Musk wrote in a tweet Sunday evening. He did not make any further statements about how the system should be better protected against fake accounts that look deceptively real.
Twitter had only implemented the tick mark rearrangement Musk announced on Wednesday. So far they have been granted to celebrities, politicians and companies after a Twitter audit. Under the new model, anyone who pays eight dollars a month gets the check. There is no identity check. The checkmark looks the same in both cases. Whether it is a previous, actually verified account or a newly purchased tick is dealing with, it only becomes clear from the text after clicking on the symbol.
Some users have created credible fake accounts with the ticks they’ve purchased, for example for basketball star LeBron James, game company Nintendo, and former President Donald Trump. Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly has apologized to Twitter users who were led to believe by a fake account that insulin would be given away for free in the future. An allegedly verified fake Chiquita account announced that it has overthrown the Brazilian government.
Musk bought Twitter two weeks ago for about $44 billion. Since then, the company has struggled with, among other things, the reluctance of large advertising clients. Ad revenue recently made up about 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue.
