Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced on Monday that the social media platform will not relaunch its paid verification service Twitter Blue until the company is confident about "significant impersonations not happening," according to a recent recording obtained by The Verge.
Musk confirmed this in a tweet on Monday night. He also added that the platform will likely use different color checks for organizations and individuals.
Holding off relaunch of Blue Verified until there is high confidence of stopping impersonation.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2022
Will probably use different color check for organizations than individuals.
Musk originally stated that the verification service will return on November 29. In a meeting with employees, however, he became unsure of that date. "We might launch it next week. We might not. But we’re not going to launch until there’s high confidence in protecting against those significant impersonations."
When Elon Musk acquired Twitter, he revamped Twitter"s Blue subscription service to give users the ability to get their own verified checkmark for $8. To help users distinguish accounts that have been verified via Twitter Blue and accounts that are verified as official, the social media platform introduced "Official" tags. While this was pulled not even 24 hours later, it was reinstated after users exploited their checkmarks to impersonate public figures and companies.
Earlier this month, Musk said that Twitter users engaging in impersonation without clearly indicating that they are a parody account in their name will be permanently suspended.
"Any given social media platform, in my view doesn’t matter what it is, is going to be vulnerable to bots and trolls unless there is some payment barrier to increase the cost of bots and trolls significantly," Musk said in the company recording.
Source: The Verge, Elon Musk (Twitter)