If you didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to give Elon Musk $7.99 for a blue check while you could, you might have to wait a little longer. Originally scheduled to relaunch on November 29, Musk tweeted Monday evening that they will put the product on hold until “there is high confidence in stopping impersonation.”
The initial rollout of Twitter Blue Verified (or the “I-paid-Elon-$7.99” blue check) was complete chaos. Of course, the feature was quickly weaponized to assist bad actors in impersonating celebrities, corporations, and government officials. One account impersonated the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and posted, “We are excited to announce insulin is now free.” They viewed the tweet millions of times before it was removed. The company’s stock fell 4.37%.
Musk also stated in his tweet that Twitter “will most likely use a different color check for organizations than for individuals.” Twitter has already experimented with a grey “official” designation for high-profile accounts, though that feature has been turned on and off many times since it was first introduced.
According to The Verge, Musk also discussed the development of features such as encrypted direct messages and video calls in an internal presentation dubbed “Twitter 2.0.” This is not the first time he has mentioned introducing end-to-end encrypted DMs. Musk hinted that Twitter is working on this feature in a response to app researcher Jane Manchun Wong’s tweet, which highlighted code related to it. Earlier this month, the Twitter CEO stated that the “goal of Twitter DM”
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As some Twitter users experiment with alternative platforms such as Mastodon and Hive, Musk claims that Twitter added 1.6 million monetizable daily active users this week, bringing the company’s total to 259.4 million. Notably, Musk engaged in a months-long legal battle after deeming these same metrics inaccurate to backtrack on his Twitter purchase.
