Twitter has already stopped people paying $8 for a blue tick after one chaotic day
Topics: Twitter, Elon Musk, Technology, US News, Viral
Dominic Smithers
Featured Image Credit: Priyanka Naskar/Alamy Stock Photo/Apex MediaWire/Alamy
Topics: Twitter, Elon Musk, Technology, US News, Viral
Is it, isn't it? Will it, won't it? Well, it seems that Elon Musk's pay-as-you-play blue tick scheme has been put on the back burner after what has been a chaotic day.
Yep, the tech billionaire had hoped that allowing users to pay $8 a month for the privilege of being 'verified' would stop bots and prevent people from being impersonated.
However, it looks like things haven't been going quite according to plan for the site's new boss, as the option to buy the coveted blue tick has been removed.
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This is most likely to do with the fact that the new system was almost immediately highjacked by people buying their ticks and then pretending to be official Twitter accounts for big businesses like BP and Tesla, as well as ex president George W. Bush, and even Musk himself.
For example, a Tesla account that had been given a blue tick, before being eventually shut down, tweeted: "A second Tesla has hit the World Trade Center."
While a parody BP account shared: "Just cause we killed the planet doesn't mean we can't miss it."
And a fake Pepsi account also made the claim: "Coke is better."
You've even had parody pages for Bush and Tony Blair joking about the war in Iraq.
In summary, it's gone to pot.
But it's not just Twitter Blue that's having teething problems; the past 24 hours has seen the whole 'Official' account business stop and start too.
And if that wasn't enough, Musk appears to have told staff that Twitter might actually cease to exist all together because the social media network faces potential bankruptcy.
According to The Guardian, Musk reportedly said that ‘bankruptcy isn’t out of the question’ when addressing employees for the first time this week.
The world’s richest man is said to have written via email: “Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn. We need roughly half of our revenue to be subscription.”
UNILAD has approached Twitter for comment.
The publication also reported that Yoel Roth - the head of safety and integrity - has also left the company, as have top security officials Damien Kieran, Marianne Fogarty and head of Lea Kissner.
What’s more, Musk is reportedly putting Twitter at risk of ‘billions of dollars’ worth of fines, with a Twitter attorney noting that his changes to the platform may have bypassed its ‘standard data governance processes’, as per The Verge.
It's also been reported that the current head of legal, Alex Spiro, has supposedly claimed that Musk is 'willing to take on a huge amount of risk' because he 'puts rockets into space, he’s not afraid of the FTC’.