Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, has revealed changes to the social media platform’s premium Twitter Blue service.
Only verified subscribers will be able to vote in polls and recommend posts to other users starting on April 15.
According to the guideline, tweets from non-paying accounts will not appear in the stream labeled “For you.”
The company announced last week that it would delete the verified status from some “legacy” accounts that were created before Mr. Musk acquired the business.
Blue-tick verification is presently $7 (£5.70) per month, and it also gives users access to more features.
Mr Musk said the changes were “the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over. It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle.”
“Voting in polls will require verification for same reason,” he added.
In an earlier post, Mr Musk said paid verification significantly increases the cost of using bots and makes it easier to identify them.
However, the move has been criticised by some social media users.
Elon Musk’s new policy will now essentially preclude non-paying users from taking part in one of those streams.
It means unverified Twitter users will be far less likely to have their tweets liked or retweeted.
On Monday, Twitter’s paid verification feature will be available once more. It was halted last month after being inundated with impersonators.
It is still $8 per month, but there is a $11 fee for those who use the Twitter app on Apple devices.
Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, has previously stated in tweets that he dislikes the commission fee Apple charges on in-app purchases.
One of Twitter Blue’s extra features is an edit button.
This has long been a feature requested by many Twitter users, although there are others who argue that it increases the potential for the spread of disinformation, if a tweet is altered after being widely shared.
Blue-tick subscribers will also see fewer ads, have their tweets amplified above others, and be able to post and view longer, better quality videos, the platform says.
Previously a blue tick was used as verification tool for high-profile accounts as a badge of authenticity. It was given out by Twitter for free – but only the firm itself decided who got one.
Mr Musk argues that this was unfair.
Those who had a blue tick under the previous regime currently still have them, but now some of these users also have a message which appears if the tick is pressed saying the account is a “legacy verified account” and “may or may not be notable”.
However, those check marks will now eventually be replaced with either gold (for businesses) or grey (for others such as authorities) badges, according to Twitter’s own account.
Under the new system, subscribers who change their names or display photos will lose their blue tick until the account has been reviewed by Twitter.
Fake accounts
The service had a chaotic initial launch in November, when people started impersonating big brands and celebrities and paying for the blue-tick badge in order to make them look authentic.
Many pretended to be Elon Musk himself.
In one instance, a user claiming to be the US pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly tweeted “insulin is free”, causing the real firm’s share price to tumble – however, Eli Lilly has since agreed that insulin prices could indeed be lower.
Having said that, anecdotally, quite a few accounts appeared to take the opportunity to subscribe for legitimate reasons.
Twitter changes
Elon Musk has made a number of sweeping changes since he took over Twitter at the end of October after buying it for $44bn (£38bn).
He said the firm was operating at a loss of $4m per day, and that it needed to become profitable.
He has laid-off around half its workforce, introduced bedrooms at Twitter HQ in San Francisco for the remaining staff working long hours, and begun re-instating controversial banned accounts, including the rapper Ye (Kanye West), former US president Donald Trump and influencer Andrew Tate.
Mr Musk also says Twitter accounts which have been inactive for a certain period of time will be deleted. This has caused dismay among those who say they cherish the accounts of loved ones who have died.
Film director Rod Lurie tweeted that his “heart was broken” at the thought of the account of his late son, Hunter, disappearing.
Unlike Facebook, Twitter users cannot nominate someone to take control of their account after their death although state executors can contact the firm with requests.
A raft of key executives then resigned from the platform.
“I’ve made the hard decision to leave Twitter,” tweeted chief security officer Lea Kissner, who reportedly stepped down with other key privacy or security executives.
Yoel Roth, the site’s head of trust and safety, then resigned just a day after staunchly defending Mr Musk’s content moderation policy to advertisers.
Late on Thursday, Mr Roth’s Twitter bio described him as “Former Head of Trust & Safety at @Twitter.”
Mr Roth had became the public face of Twitter’s content moderation after Mr Musk took over.
Mr Musk had praised him for defending Twitter’s ongoing efforts to fight harmful misinformation and hate speech.
I’ve heard Twitter in its current state described as an aeroplane, mid-flight, without pilots.
The sudden departure of the head of trust and safety, the chief information security officer, and both the chief privacy and compliance officers is a dramatic development. It’s not clear how soon they will be replaced, while the firm remains this unstable and sweeping job cuts have already been made.
From a security perspective, Twitter will, like all big platforms, be a constant target for hackers and bad actors around the world, meaning it cannot afford to take its eye off the ball and it must continue to ensure that its systems are robust, and threats are monitored.
As for users’ privacy, you don’t need me to tell you how important that is. And indeed, as we’ve seen, the US regulators are already keeping a very close eye on what’s going on.
Elon Musk, on the other hand, says engagement and user numbers are higher than ever. We only have his word for it – I have to say that anecdotally I’m seeing plenty of Twitter Blue subscribers who seem happy with their new “blue tick”. And however many of them there are, that’s all fresh income that the firm did not previously have.
But it’s also causing its own headache because now anybody can have a badge which until very recently was a symbol of authenticity – including fakes.
Musk has also said that bankruptcy is not out of the question. While it may feel like we are watching Twitter speeding towards the edge of a cliff, I think it’s too early to tell whether it will manage to put the brakes on in time. In the early days of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg’s motto was “move fast and break things” – Elon Musk appears to have taken this to another level.
Official, or not?
The Twitter Blue subscription service allowed users to pay £6.99 ($7.99) per month for a blue tick. There would be a separate grey “official” badge for some high-profile accounts.
But on Wednesday Musk scrapped the new grey tick almost immediately, which added to the confusion.
However, on Friday new grey official badges for large organisations began reappearing on some Twitter profiles.
There has also been the emergence of fake accounts impersonating celebrities and politicians such as NBA star LeBron James and former UK prime minister Tony Blair.
US-based PR strategist Max Burns said he had seen fake accounts with the verified blue tick badge bought through Twitter Blue posing as support accounts for real airlines and asking customers who were trying to contact them on Twitter to direct message the fake accounts instead.
“How long until a prankster takes a real passenger’s ticket information and cancels their flight? Or takes their credit card info and goes on a spending spree?” he said.
“It will only take one major incident for every airline to bail on Twitter as a source of customer engagement.”
Following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter on October 27, the world’s richest man proposed a range of controversial changes to the platform. With mounting evidence that he is making it up as he goes along, these proposals are tweeted out in a stream-of-consciousness manner from Musk’s Twitter account.
Primarily to raise revenue, one of the ideas was to charge US$8 a month to obtain a verified status – that is, the coveted blue tick badge next to the account handle.
Within the space of a few days, the paid verification change has already been rolled out in several countries, including Australia, under the Twitter Blue subscription service.
More than just verification
According to Twitter, the blue tick lets people know an account of interest is authentic. Currently, there are seven categories of “public interest accounts”, such as government office accounts, news organisations and journalists, and influencers.
Yet this seemingly innocuous little blue icon is far from a simple verification tool in Twitter’s fight against impersonation and fraud.
In the public view, a verified status signifies social importance. It is a coveted status symbol to which users aspire, in large part because Twitter’s approval process has made it difficult to obtain.
That’s partly because the blue tick has a controversial history. After receiving widespread condemnation for verifying white supremacists in 2017, Twitter halted its verification process for more than three years.
There’s a fundamental mismatch between what Twitter wants the blue tick to mean versus how the public perceives it, something the Twitter Safety team itself acknowledged in 2017.
Verification was meant to authenticate identity & voice but it is interpreted as an endorsement or an indicator of importance. We recognize that we have created this confusion and need to resolve it. We have paused all general verifications while we work and will report back soon
But they didn’t resolve it. When Twitter resumed verifying accounts systematically in 2021, it wasn’t long until the process began to fail again, with blue ticks being handed out to bots and fake accounts.
Moreover, the public is still confused about what the blue tick signifies, and views it as a status symbol.
Lords and peasants
Musk’s stream-of-consciousness policy proposals may reflect his own preference for interacting with verified accounts. Despite his repeated claims of “power to the people” and breaking the “lords and peasants” system of verified versus non-verified accounts, I ran a data analysis of 1,493 of Musk’s tweets during 2022, and found that more than half (57%) of his interactions were with verified accounts.
Evidently, having a verified status makes one worthy of his attention. Thus, Musk himself arguably views the blue tick as a status symbol, like everyone else (except Twitter).
However, Musk’s US$8 blue tick proposal is not only misguided but, ironically, likely to produce even more inauthenticity and harm on the platform.
A fatal flaw stems from the fact that “payment verification” is not, in fact, verification.
Fact from fraud
Although Twitter’s verification system is by no means perfect and is far from transparent, it did at least aspire to the kinds of verification practices journalists and researchers use to distinguish fact from fiction, and authenticity from fraud. It takes time and effort. You can’t just buy it.
Despite its flaws, the verification process largely succeeded in rooting out a sizable chunk of illegitimate activity on the platform, and highlighted notable accounts in the public interest. In contrast, Musk’s payment verification only verifies that a person has US$8.
Just to make this as clear as possible.
What verification means now: We’ve confirmed this person or company is who they say they are.
What verification will mean in the future: I have $8.
Elon could still back out of this, but that’s the fundamental change that he’s proposing.
Payment verification can’t guarantee the system won’t be exploited for social harm. For example, we already saw that conspiracy theory influencers such as “QAnon John” are at risk of becoming legitimised through the purchase of a blue tick.
Opening the floodgates for bots
The problem is even worse at larger scales. It is hard enough to detect and prevent bot and troll networks from poisoning the information landscape with disinformation and spam.
Now, for the low cost of US$800, foreign adversaries can launch a network of 100 verified bot accounts. The more you can pay, the more legitimacy you can purchase in the public sphere.
To make matters worse, Musk publicly stated that verified accounts who pay US$8 will be granted more visibility on the platform, while non-verified accounts will be suppressed algorithmically.
He believes this will solve hate speech and fake accounts by prioritising verified accounts in search, replies and mentions. If anything, it will have the opposite effect: those with enough money will dominate the public sphere. Think Russian bots and cryptocurrency spammers.
Consider also that the ability to participate anonymously on social media has many positive advantages, including safety for marginalised and at-risk groups.
Giving users tools to manage their public and personal spheres is crucial to self-identity and online culture. Punishing people who want to remain anonymous on Twitter is not the answer.
Worse yet, connecting social media profiles to payment verification could cause real harm if a person’s account is compromised and the attacker learns their identity through their payment records.
A cascade of consequences
Musk’s ideas are already causing a cascading series of unintended consequences on the platform. Accounts with blue ticks began changing their profile handle to “Elon Musk” and profile picture to parody him. In response, Musk tweeted a new policy proposal that Twitter handles engaging in impersonation would be suspended unless they specify being a “parody”.
Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended
Users will not even receive a warning, as comedian Kathy Griffin and her 2 million followers discovered when her account was suspended for parodying Musk.
Musk’s vision for user verification does not square up with that of Twitter or the internet research community.
While the existing system is flawed, at least it was systematic, somewhat transparent, and with the trappings of accountability. It was also revisable in the face of public criticism.
On the other hand, Musk’s policy approach is tyrannical and opaque. Having abolished the board of directors, the “Chief Twit” has all the power and almost no accountability.
We are left with a harrowing vision of a fragile and flawed online public square: in a world where everyone is verified, no one is verified.