Fake accounts, chaos and few sign-ups: the first day of Twitter Blue was messy
Friday marked the first full day Twitter’s new policies for verified accounts were applied – and the results were not pretty.
Twenty-four hours after blue checkmarks began to disappear from formerly verified Twitter accounts, chaos reigned on the website, with impersonation and false information running rampant and few people signing up for the service the changes were meant to promote.
The move came under new owner Elon Musk, who has pledged to make the struggling social media firm profitable by any means necessary – in this case, attempting to force users to pay for verification services that were previously free.
Under the original blue-check system, Twitter had roughly 400,000 verified usersand checks meant that Twitter had verified that users were who they said they were.
Under the new Twitter Blue program, individual users can pay $8 per month for a blue checkmark while organizations pay upwards of $1,000 monthly. The change has shifted the meaning of the check from an account that has been independently verified to one that paid a premium to help their tweets be seen by more people.
The rollout – and its results – have been chaotic. Here’s where things stood on Friday:
Several high profile Twitter users and celebrities lost their verification status on Thursday, including Beyoncé, Pope Francis, and Oprah Winfrey. President Donald Trump – who has not tweeted since he was allowed to return to the platform after being banned – has also been unverified.
Some celebrity users – including basketball star LeBron James, author Stephen King and Star Trek’s William Shatner – pledged not to join Twitter Blue. All three still had blue checks on Friday after Musk said he paid for them himself.
“My Twitter account says I’ve subscribed
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