Andrew Joseph
When Elon Musk took control of Twitter in a $44 billion acquisition, he pledged to make significant changes to the platform. And his primary focus for Twitter — besides laying off 50 percent of the company, tweeting conspiracy theories and begging advertisers to stay onboard — has been turning Twitter’s verification feature into a pay-for-play product.
Twitter launched its new version of Twitter Blue on Wednesday, which offered a verified checkmark badge without ID verification to any user who pays the $8 monthly fee. Given that the original purpose of the verified checkmark was to signify that the account user was who they claim to be, eliminating ID verification opened up a predictable problem for anyone who looks to Twitter for sports news (or any reliable information in general).
For the price of $8, people were able to create fake accounts of prominent sports figures now with an accompanying blue checkmark. It immediately caused confusion on timelines as the fake accounts started popping up throughout the day.
It’s an issue that everyone saw coming, and it was totally self-inflicted on Twitter’s part. Verification served the purpose of letting users know that the verified account was authentic. Developers at Twitter were well aware of that because they launched an “Official” badge alongside verified checkmarks for prominent accounts before Musk decided he didn’t like it and killed the feature after a couple hours.
Unless significant changes are made to the pay-for-verification model, Twitter is going to be an exhausting place for sports fans. It’s not going well!
