According to The Guardian, Musk said the platform would launch a new verification service on Friday next week, having pulled an earlier attempt at a revamp that gave blue ticks to accounts paying $7.99 (£6.60) a month after it triggered a flood of imposter accounts.
The Guardian also reported the Musk said verified accounts under the new system would carry a blue tick – or checkmark – for individuals, a grey tick for “government” and a gold tick for companies.
Elon Musk tweeted (responding to two other accounts): “Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week. Gold check for companies, grey check for governments, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates. Painful, but necessary”
The Verge reported: As it turns out, offering so-called verified check marks for an $8 monthly subscription without actually verifying identities wasn’t a brilliant idea. After Musk ignored warnings from Twitter’s own trust and safety staff, the platform’s paid Twitter Blue subscriptions rolled out quickly and resulted in some ‘verified’ accounts impersonating notable public figures and brands, driving away advertisers from the “high-risk” platform. Musk has since said the company wouldn’t relaunch Twitter Blue until “we’re confident about significant impersonations not happening.”
CNBC reported that Elon Musk was forced to pause the $8 per month Twitter Blue service, which allowed anyone to pay the subscription for the blue verification tick, after users abused the system by impersonating brands and famous people.
According to CNBC, on Monday, Mr. Musk said that Twitter would delay the relaunch of its $8 per month Blue Verified service. At the time, Musk said Twitter will “probably use a different color check for organizations than individuals.”
CNBC reported that Musk had earlier said he planned to relaunch Twitter Blue on Nov. 29. Musk’s latest timeline puts the relaunch on Dec. 2. The subscription service is Musk’s attempt to find new revenue stream at Twitter as part of the billionaire’s controversial shakeup at the social media firm.
The Hill reported that Mr. Musk said that paid users will have the same blue check as those previously given to verified accounts, which were given to signify a “notable” account. Musk has previously said those verified users will eventually lose their checkmarks.
“All verified individual humans will have the same blue check, as boundary of what constitutes ‘notable’ is otherwise too subjective,” Musk tweeted: “Individuals can have secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an org if verified as such by that org. Longer explanation next week.”
It is unclear to me whether or not the blue checkmarks (and the other ones) will actually appear in the timeframe that Elon Musk appears to think it will. Hopefully, he’s learned something after those problems appeared. I think it would be good for Mr. Musk to be less impulsive when it comes to making decisions regarding Twitter.