Elon Musk backtracks. Faced with the proliferation of spoofed accounts, Twitter reintroduced Friday in the greatest cacophony an “official” badge to certify certain profiles and finally suspended its paid authentication system. “To fight against identity theft, we have added an “official” acronym to certain accounts,” tweeted the influential platform, bought on October 28 by the billionaire for 44 billion dollars.
This gray-colored logo appeared under many advertisers’ profiles and also, briefly, on the @Twitter account. It had been introduced for the first time on Wednesday on the social network but had been quickly deleted by its new boss, the whimsical owner of Tesla and SpaceX.
Explosion of fake celebrity or big business accounts
Elon Musk has been pushing since his arrival at the head of Twitter for the establishment of another authentication system, billed nearly 8 dollars per month. “Twitter Blue” allows anyone to obtain the blue check mark for authenticity, which until now was reserved for organizations and individuals with a certain reputation.
But its introduction this week in the United States has been accompanied by an outbreak of accounts posing as those of celebrities or large companies. Fake LeBron James or Joe Biden tweeted in the name of the basketball star or the President of the United States. Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly had to apologize on Thursday after a successful tweet from an account in its name, with the blue checkmark, promising free insulin.
Service suspended ‘to address spoofing issues’
It did not seem possible, this Friday, to subscribe to “Twitter Blue” on the site or via the mobile application. An internal memo, published by some US media, says the service has been suspended “to solve problems of usurpation”. “Please note that Twitter is going to do a lot of silly things in the coming months. We will keep what works and change what does not work, “warned the billionaire.
Since he bought Twitter, Elon Musk has laid off half of his 7,500 employees and launched several projects manu militari, including the overhaul of the paid subscription. Thursday evening, the American competition agency (FTC) sent him a rare warning. “We are following recent developments at Twitter with great concern. No CEO or company is above the law,” said one of its spokespersons.