Elon Musk is planning to dismantle Twitter’s decade-plus-old verification program, designed to increase trust in the social network by providing a visual signifier that high-profile accounts are, in fact, who they say they are.
Going forward, Musk’s $7.99/month Twitter Blue subscription will the only way to get the “verified” blue check-mark — except that the identities of the users who pay for that are not actually going to be verified by Twitter.
“Far too many corrupt legacy Blue ‘verification’ checkmarks exist, so no choice but to remove legacy Blue in coming months,” Musk tweeted Thursday in reply to a user who asked why her “legacy” verification status was now showing up as a Twitter Blue verified account.
Entrepreneur and multibillionaire Mark Cuban tweeted at Musk that the change “killed the most valuable part of Twitter, the ability to quickly and easily find information from sources I have chosen to trust.”
Cuban added, “I just spent too much time muting all the newly purchased checkmark accts in an attempt to make my verified mentions useful again.” Musk replied, “It’s working for me. That said, we can definitely make the verified mentions tab more usable.”
Musk, the world’s richest individual who is CEO of Twitter, Tesla and SpaceX, completed the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter two weeks ago and laid off 50% of the staff one week ago.
By Todd Spangler, Variety
