By Oyintari Ben
Twitter’s paid verification membership, Twitter Blue, won’t be relaunched until “we’re sure about large impersonations not happening,” Elon Musk said in a Monday meeting with staff.
Last Monday, Musk said his $8 monthly Blue subscription would once again be made available on November 29. But he admitted that the debut date was uncertain while speaking to the staff: “We might launch it next week. Perhaps not. However, we won’t go live until we have absolute confidence in our ability to block such serious impersonations.
Since Twitter Blue doesn’t confirm that a user is who they say they are, it’s unclear how Musk plans to block accounts from impersonating others with the blue checkmark.
Musk acknowledged in a tweet that the company was delaying the introduction of Blue Verified until there was “high confidence” that impersonation would be stopped, and that we “will probably use different colour check for organizations than individuals.”
Musk did not go into further detail during the meeting with Twitter staff today, just stating that “this is still something we’re thinking through.” He added that the firm will “probably” need to give “institutions and companies” a “different color check.”
Unless there is some sort of payment barrier to drastically raise the cost of bots and trolls, he asserted, “Any given social media site, no matter what it is, is going to be vulnerable to them.” He added that Twitter would no longer be making layoffs and would instead start hiring.
