One of Elon Musk’s main measures, as soon as he took charge of Twitter, was to change the requirements to obtain the coveted verified social network. As we already told you, he decided to associate it indissolubly with Twitter Blue, the payment method of the social network. In this way, the famous blue check would stop indicating that that person or company has public relevance and is really who they say they are, to become an indicator that the user has been verified by the social network. And, of course, it would go from being free to costing what the subscription would cost, eight dollars a month.
What came next you already know: hundreds (if not thousands) of accounts paid Twitter Blue to get verified but, contrary to what Musk claimed, their identities were not verified and, in addition, users were able to make changes to their profiles after obtaining it (something that was very limited with the old model). Impact? Supposedly verified accounts posing as company profiles (with disastrous effects for them), by all kinds of personalities and, the favorite choice of many pranksters and impostors: also by Musk himself.
Although at first he seemed to take it as a joke (let’s remember his tweet, from a few weeks ago, in which he stated that humor was already legal on Twitter), the proliferation of Twitter Blue accounts (and also some of celebrities) that decided to take advantage of the check blue to impersonate him quickly ran out of patience, so Twitter began demanding that all accounts that acted in this way should add the word parody (parody) in the name (not in the description or in the identifier) or they would be permanently banned from the social network.
This measure did not appease the mood of the users, the list of affected companies and personalities continued to grow and, surely quite upset, Elon Musk decided temporarily suspend hiring Twitter Blue for those accounts that still do not have it. He indicated, yes, that it was a temporary measure, and that his plans were to reactivate it as soon as possible. Of course, as soon as possible, but after having found a solution to this problem.
And it seems that the solution has already appeared because, according to what we can read in Engadget, new accounts will have to wait 90 days before signing up for Twitter Blue. A period that, according to what the company should consider, will deter many of the users who want to register to obtain the verification and, in this way, continue with the impersonation of companies and famous people on the social network.
It will work? Yes… at least during the first 90 days after the possibility of contracting Twitter Blue is reactivated, a term that allows the social network work to establish the necessary measures to combat this problem. The key, therefore, is whether they will be able to do it, since nothing prevents pranksters from starting today to create new accounts and keep track of those 90 days and, once completed, return to the original plan.
