Blue Verified’s relaunch suspended by Twitter

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Blue Verified

Twitter’s blue check subscription service “Blue Verified” which was set to be relaunched on the 29th of November has been suspended, Elon Musk says.

According to a tweet from the CEO of the microblogging platform, the paid verified Blue check relaunch would be put on hold pending when high confidence in stopping impersonation is restored.

Read also: Twitter Blue suspended amid controversies

Impersonation problems with Twitter’s Blue Verified

The famous verified mark, or as Musk calls it, the “Blue Verified,” was previously reserved for real accounts of famous names, including politicians, celebrities, journalists, and other public figures.

However, Elon Musk introduced a subscription option where anyone willing to pay can be given the blue check. The change came a week after Musk took over the social media company in a $44 billion deal.

Internet trolls opened several parody accounts for popular entities since Twitter Blue launched two weeks after Elon Musk took over as the CEO of Twitter.

The most notable parody accounts during this period included an account for Lebron James, which posted a request to leave the Los Angeles Lakers, an account for former President George Bush tweeted, “I miss killing iraquis”, and another account that impersonated the electric vehicle manufacture, Tesla. 

Elon musk under fire for Blue Verified

The infamous blue check subscription option led to several companies suspending advertisements on the platform, including General Motors, General Mills, Audi, Volkswagen, and several others. One of the world’s largest advertising companies, Omnicom Media Group, also paused ads on Twitter. 

In addition to the “official” labels, Musk has proposed companies may be better able to identify official accounts, including a suggestion that organisations will be able to “identify which other Twitter accounts are actually associated with them.”

Suspension of Blue Verified

Twitter Blue was suspended after several trolls created accounts to impersonate government officials and other celebrities, causing a spread of misinformation and confusion on the social media platform.

This decision was announced in an internal note identifying service misuse as the reason behind the suspension. According to the Internal note, it said “An update on what we did tonight: hid the entry point to Twitter Blue, added the ‘official’ label for ONLY advertisers. Note: here is at least one way for users to sign up for Blue. Legacy Blue users can go to subscriptions and upgrade”

Read also: Twitter Blue users get access to the edit functionality

Proposed Return of Blue Verified

Musk had earlier mentioned last week that the Blue check verification badge which was launched about two weeks ago but suspended due to impersonation issues, would be back on 29th November.

However, his latest tweet suggests that the microblogging platform would do more work to ensure that the impersonation of popular individuals is reduced to a bare minimum. The second part of his tweet states that Twitter will probably use different colour checks for organizations than individuals.

Read also: All you need to know about Twitter Blue subscription package and how it works


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