Elon Musk became the Twitter owner quite recently but has already managed to make a fuss with his controversial decisions. The launch of one of the most discussed features — paid account verification — was postponed at the very last moment.
According to the NYT, Twitter has decided to postpone the launch of paid profile verification until the end of the US midterm elections. Even though elections have already taken place, a new launch date has not yet been set. Last week we received a Twitter update mentioning the Blue premium subscription, but in fact, access to it is not yet available. The reason for the cancellation of the original plans was criticism of the management and fear that this tool could be used for fraudulent purposes to confuse and misinform the electors.
The fact is that a paid service allows any user to get a blue tick of approval. Thus, scammers or attackers can easily impersonate influencers, journalists, and politicians. If earlier it was possible to verify an account only by confirming that it belongs to a real person, now this process is greatly simplified. By the way, earlier parody and fan profiles could not get access to verification.
It is unclear how Twitter, in general, and Musk, in particular, plan to address this issue and deal with false verified accounts. We suspect that the postponement of this feature launch may be due to the need to think more carefully about the entire process. However, it is known that Musk ordered the developers to introduce new monetization tools as soon as possible. Such a rush can cause significant reputational damage to the platform.
How do you feel about these changes to Twitter? How should developers implement account verification to avoid the growth of fraud?