Elon Musk pauses relaunch of Twitter's $8 plan till impersonation stops

The introduction of Twitter's $8 per month blue tick verification plan by Elon Musk earlier this month led to the creation of various fake accounts on the platform

Elon Musk on Tuesday announced that the relaunch of the "Blue Verified" badge has been suspended until the problem of impersonation on the platform stops. The introduction of an $8 per month blue tick verification plan led to the creation of various fake accounts on the platform. 

The problem was so severe that Twitter suspended the $8 plan for iOS users just three days (on November 4) after rolling it out on November 1. Some of the fake profiles that emerged had names like "Jesus Christ" and "George Bush". In one instance, a fake profile by the name of "Elon Musk" also appeared briefly on the platform. All of these profiles were blue tick verified.  

"Holding off relaunch of Blue Verified until there is high confidence of stopping impersonation," Musk tweeted on Tuesday. 

"Will probably use different colour checks for organizations than individuals," he added. 

After Musk took over Twitter, the microblogging site has been adding and removing separate, grey checkmarks on high-profile accounts without explaining the reason.

On Monday, Elon Musk told Twitter employees that the company will not relaunch its paid verification subscription, Twitter Blue until they are "confident about significant impersonations not happening," The Verge cited a recording of his remarks.

Last week, Elon Musk said that his $8 per month Blue subscription will be made available on November 29. However, in his meeting with employees, he confirmed that the timing of the launch of Blue verified was not clear, as per The Verge report.

In his meeting with Twitter employees, Elon Musk said, "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," The Verge reported.

Elon Musk in his meeting with Twitter employees on Monday said that the company will "probably" need to give "institutions and companies" a "different colour check." However, he did not give further details regarding the plan.

Musk stressed any social media platform according to him "is going to be vulnerable to bots and trolls "until there is payment introduced to increase the "cost of bots and trolls significantly."

Meanwhile, Elon Musk in a tweet on November 22 claimed that Twitter has added 1.6 million daily active users in the past week and called it an all-time high. Musk tweeted, "Twitter added 1.6M daily active users this past week, another all-time high.

(With agency inputs)