Twitter has stopped this Friday access to its Blue payment service, which for a few days gave subscribers the blue verified user symbol and brought back the “official” mark to distinguish some accounts from possible imposters.
The social network owned by Elon Musk thus gave a new lurch to try to deal with the chaos generated by his latest decisions, which had led to a proliferation of users posing as personalities or companies.
The option of pay 8 dollars a month to access the verified account symbol, which until now had distinguished relevant profiles whose identity was confirmed, has triggered confusion, making it easier for users to impersonate others as a joke or for fraudulent purposes.
Companies like Nintendo, the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly or Musk’s own Tesla they watched as users armed with the blue verification “tick” posed as them for hours, until their accounts were suspended. Today, the possibility of subscribing to Twitter Blue had disappeared in the United States for unverified users, although the company has not made any announcement about it.
On its website, Twitter does make it clear that any account created since November 9, when the new verification system was launched, will not be able to subscribe to Twitter Blue now. According to an internal message seen by the technology website Platformer, Twitter has opted for paralyze service and stop access to payment verification “to help address spoofing issues.”
In parallel, Twitter announced that it has recovered the “official” label to distinguish some accounts, a brand that it had created this week, but hours later had been canceled by direct order of Musk. Apparently, only advertisers on the social network are now receiving this badge, which is intended to combat the imposter problem.
