Twitter Blue, the new premium service that offers a blue checkmark for $8 a month, is down after the platform was inundated by a spate of fake accounts approved by Twitter. Twitter has paused registrations for the service.
Before Elon Musk took over Twitter two weeks ago, the blue check mark was reserved for celebrities, journalists and politicians, who had been verified by the platform. It was precisely intended to prevent people from impersonating someone else through fake accounts.
With the new system, anyone who pays $8 can get a check. After that, Twitter flooded with fake accounts with a blue check mark. Nintendo, Lockheed Martin and Musk’s own Tesla and SpaceX, among others, were imitated, as were accounts of various professional athletes. If you want to be sure whether it is an official account, you should now click on the check mark: only then you can see why someone has obtained it.
Corrupt and gray check marks
A note sent to Twitter employees Thursday night stated that it had decided to temporarily disable Twitter Blue logins with the intention of “helping address impersonation issues,” the Washington Post reported.
Yesterday, Musk tweeted that “too many corrupt blue verification check marks exist, so have no choice but to remove legacy Blue in the coming months.” Twitter Blue was not available on the online version of the platform: users are notified that logging in is only possible via the iPhone. But the iPhone version does not offer Twitter Blue as an option. Twitter has not yet responded to the matter.
Twitter has also started adding gray “official” labels to some prominent accounts again. Earlier this week, the labels were also rolled out, only to be discontinued a few hours later. Last night a few appeared again, including at Twitter’s own account and at large companies such as Amazon, Nike and Coca-Cola, only to disappear again later.
The US trade regulator the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) expressed its concerns about Twitter yesterday. The watchdog issued a rare warning to the social media yesterday after several key employees resigned. Privacy concerns due to the fake accounts after the introduction of the new blue check policy may have played a role in that decision.
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