Twitter restores “official” account tag as $8 blue-tick option disappears

Twitter Inc. on Friday said it had reinstated the “official” badges given to some accounts, days after several users reported that the new $8 subscription option for the blue verification tick had disappeared.

The move follows a surge in fake accounts on the platform after new boss Elon Musk allowed users to pay $8 for the coveted blue tick, which previously used to be verified accounts of politicians, actors and other prominent figures. was reserved.

Fake accounts of Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX as well as several big brands including Eli Lilly & Co, Nestle and Lockheed Martin have surfaced with blue ticks.

Twitter’s support account, tagged “official,” tweeted Friday, “To combat impersonation, we’ve added an ‘official’ label to some accounts.” Elon Musk tweeted on Wednesday that he “killed” the new label just hours after it was rolled out.

Meanwhile, several users said that the option to sign up for Twitter Blue, the $8 subscription service that comes with blue tick verification, had disappeared.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment on that.

“Checked with Twitter’s API (application programming interface) and in-app purchases for Twitter BlueVerified are no longer listed for production,” app researcher Jane Manchun Wong said in a tweet.

Elon Musk said on Sunday that Twitter users impersonating someone without explicitly specifying it as a “parody” account would be suspended permanently without warning.

While some revealed that it was a parody account in their description, several other fake brand accounts, including those of Nintendo and BP, were suspended.

Earlier in the day, Mr Musk said his companies would be in good shape in 2023 despite the prospect of a tough economy.

This tweet by Elon Musk comes a day after Twitter was likely to go bankrupt. In his first company-wide email, Mr Musk warned that Twitter would not be able to “avoid the ensuing economic downturn” if it fails to boost subscription revenue to offset falling ad revenue, according to the message viewers. Three people told Reuters.

(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)