The reasons why Elon Musk has postponed the verification system of Twitter
The much-vaunted update to the Twitter verification process has been a disaster since its implication though more changes are expected to come.
Elon Musk’s Twitter venture has had a number of hiccups since his purchase. One of his big ideas to make the company profitable is an overhaul of the verification system. Currently available in a small number of countries, Twitter Blue is a paid version of verification which Musk hopes will beat spam while also forcing users to pay for the Twitter service. Its big rollout was expected for 29 November.
But a memo on Monday has ended this rollout, at least for the present.
Holding off relaunch of Blue Verified until there is high confidence of stopping impersonation,” he wrote on Monday evening after a meeting with staff, “Will probably use different color check for organizations than individuals.”
At present, accounts that have a blue check mark whether it was given by Twitter or paid for are nearly indistinguishable, though clicking on said mark explains how it was levied. The paid-for verification process was immediately pushed to breaking point as users changed their usernames to big companies and tweeting as if they were the companies.
It has been thought that these efforts lost some companies like Lockheed Martin and Eli Lilly billions of dollars after their reputations were tarnished on the site. The case of Eli Lilly was particularly serious for the company as politicians weighed in on their price hiking of life saving drugs such as insulin. Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted that Eli Lilly should apologize for the over 1,200% price hikes for the drug since 1996 to $275, adding that it takes less than $10 to manufacture the medication.
The patent was released for $1 back in the 1920s so the drug could be mass manufactured,
What is the “official” check mark?
You may have noticed that a number of previously verified accounts now have two verified marks, both a blue and a clear tick.
This is another tier of verification for accounts such as news and celebrities so there is no confusion over whether the account is a troll or not. However, this leaves the system in basically the same state as before Musk bought it