Tag: paid verification

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Twitter will restrict For You recommendations to ‘verified’ accounts

Twitter owner Elon Musk’s latest scheme to address “bot swarms” make money is to limit the platform’s ‘For You’ page to verified accounts.

In a tweet (it’s always a tweet), Musk said that the change would come into effect on April 15th. Along with limiting For You recommendations to verified accounts, Twitter will also limit voting in polls to verified accounts.

Verified, in this case, refers to accounts subscribed to Twitter’s ‘Blue’ service, a system that hands out the blue checkmark verification symbol to anyone who pays. It was a controversial change from the old verification system that, while not perfect, was actually a useful way of determining whether an account was authentic. (That system is supposedly going away on April 1st, though Musk has been talking about killing off legacy verified for months). Government and company accounts should also count as verified, though companies need to fork out $1,000 per month for it.

A screenshot of Musk’s tweet, since he has a tendency to delete things. You can find it here while it remains available.

Though Twitter has toyed with the idea of adding government ID-based verification, at the time of writing, the company hasn’t actually done so. At this point, anyone with a phone number and credit card can get a Blue verified Twitter account. Moreover, ID-based verification would still be tied to Blue, meaning users would need to pay for the privilege of giving Musk more of their personal data.

Per Musk’s tweet, all this is in an effort to “address advanced AI bot swarms taking over.” However, if Twitter isn’t performing real verification of users, it’s not going to solve the bot problem Musk keeps talking about.

Besides, Musk acknowledged in a follow-up tweet that verified bots were fine as long as they followed the rules and didn’t impersonate people. In other words, Musk doesn’t have a problem with bots on Twitter as long as he can make money off them.

And really, that’s what this whole thing is — another way to try and wring cash out of the platform. After all, Musk just admitted that Twitter’s value has dropped to half of what he paid for it (and Musk previously said he overpaid for Twitter).

Coupled with Twitter’s recent security issues and other problems, it seems like a really bad idea to pay for any part of the service, no matter how badly you want your tweets to show up on the For You page. But if you really want to make a monthly donation to Musk pay for Twitter Blue, it costs $10/mo or $105/year on the web or $15/mo or $154.99/year on iOS and Android.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Source: Elon Musk Via: 9to5Mac

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Musk plans to relaunch paid verification on November 29th

Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk still plans to forge ahead with paid verification on the platform, apparently learning little from the recent fiasco.

In a recent tweet, Musk announced that Twitter Blue would launch again on November 29th “to make sure that it is rock solid.”

As a quick refresher, Twitter launched then quickly un-launched a revamped version of its Blue subscription service on November 9th. Customers who signed on for the $9.99 subscription got a blue checkmark next to their name. However, that checkmark was previously used as Twitter’s verification badge to denote authentic accounts, primarily a tool intended to prevent people from impersonating high-profile accounts like those of government officials, companies, celebrities, or journalists.

Basically, everyone with a modicum of foresight knew paid verification was a bad idea, including Twitter’s own trust and safety team, which detailed potential problems and solutions in a seven-page document served up to Musk and his cohort ahead of the November 9th launch. Naturally, Musk ignored most of the suggestions and, as predicted, paid verification resulted in a flood of impersonations on the platform. Accounts sporting the new paid badge impersonated brands, government officials, and more, leading some to lose significant amounts of money. One account even parodied Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Admittedly, it was fun to watch the chaos unfold.

Musk also tweeted his apparent plan for dealing with impersonations, which is just temporarily removing the blue checkmark from accounts when they change their name. Accounts will get the checkmark back once Twitter confirms the new name meets the company’s terms of service. It remains unclear who will be vetting all these name changes, given Musk laid off a significant chunk of Twitter’s staff, fired most of the company’s contract workers, and issued an ultimatum to those who remain to put in long hours or quit. It’s also unclear if Twitter will vet account names when they sign up for Blue.

Musk reiterated plans to remove unpaid legacy checkmarks “in a few months” as well and tweeted about ‘X’ again, calling it the “everything app.”

Aside from the Blue relaunch, Musk tweeted some other details about ongoing Twitter projects. Leaker Jane Manchun Wong tweeted evidence of Twitter working on end-to-end encrypted DMs, to which Musk replied simply, “😉.” Wong also tweeted that the source detail, which shows the app a person tweeted from, was gone in the app prototype she looked at. It’ll be sad to see tweet sources go, considering how much fun tech folks had spotting Android ads tweeted from iPhones.

You can follow along with the latest Twitter turmoil here.

Source: Elon Musk Via: The Verge

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Twitter reportedly delays paid verification until November 9th

Twitter has reportedly delayed the rollout of its new paid verification system until after the U.S. midterm elections, according to the New York Times.

The Times cited messages from an internal Twitter Slack channel in which employees questioned “making such a risky change before elections” over its potential to cause election interference.

A manager working on the verification badge project replied that “we’ve made the decision to move the launch of this release to Nov. 9, after the election.” The blue checkmark shown on verified accounts adds a level of authenticity to those accounts — by opening up verification to all, it potentially risks making fake news, misinformation, and fake accounts appear more legitimate.

Moreover, the Times said that Twitter didn’t respond to requests to comment, noting that the company had “almost entirely laid off” its communications team (hardly a surprise for a company owned by Elon Musk).

It’s an interesting turn of events, with the decision coming just a day after an update to the Twitter iOS app offered up paid verification. Text from the iOS app update details noted that users can sign up for Twitter Blue to get a blue checkmark “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.”

Amid the blue check chaos, Musk declared Twitter would permanently ban accounts that impersonate people without a parody label. The escalation in Twitter’s impersonation policies came amid a slew of verified accounts pretended to be Musk and made fun of him. However, despite saying that accounts labeled as parody would be okay, Twitter has banned some parody accounts that impersonated Musk too.

Since taking the helm at Twitter, Musk has created turmoil across the social network. Brands have paused advertising on Twitter over uncertainty with leadership, hate speech spiked after Musk’s takeover, and Musk has suggested various schemes to try and squeeze profit out of the company (including paid verification, DMs, and more). You can keep up with the latest Musk x Twitter news here.

Source: The New York Times