Elon Musk sparks new controversy with Twitter. Musk bought the social media giant originally for $44 billion but reports in the previous quarters say the company value plummeted to only half of what Musk originally paid.
Naturally, the people behind Twitter and Musk himself were scrambling to keep the company going. To seemingly help fund the social media platform, Musk announced a few months back that the privilege of getting the coveted verified blue tick on Twitter will be removed. Instead, he said that celebrities who want to reinstall their verified status need to pay a subscription of $8 per month.
After the announcement, there was no fixed time for when the blue ticks are going to be removed. So people were shocked when their verification statuses reverted to the regular user account on April 20.
But immediately after the removal, it seemed that Twitter intentionally or unintentionally restored some blue ticks for select celebrities. Musk clarified the issue by saying that he restored the verification status of celebrities like LeBron James and William Shatner.
Netizens who are actively following the Twitter saga have commented that Musk seemed to be trolling celebrities on his platform. He responded in a joking and dismissive manner.
However, that’s not all in the Twitterverse. After the whole blue tick fiasco, it seemed that the accounts of some deceased celebrities regained their verified status.
Paul Walker, Kobe Bryant, Norm Macdonald, and Anthony Bourdain are some of the deceased celebrities who now have verified statuses on Twitter. Nobody is sure if this was intentional or not, but some of the accounts have been inactive for years. So whether Musk and Twitter have problems with the blue ticks or they did this is left unanswered.
Critics of Musk’s Twitter blue tick issue say that misinformation and fake news are more likely to spread because he made verification status a subscription. Confusion on whether an account is legitimate or not is more likely to occur.
Musk has not commented on how to solve these initial mishaps that could happen but the celebrities affected are not happy.
It seems that the reasoning behind the subscription blue ticks is purely financial. Twitter has downsized in employees in the last few months and it was a huge controversy. And it seems to recuperate what the social media platform lost in value, Musk is counting on celebrities to badly want that verified blue tick on their accounts.
This is a developing story and Twitter has not released its side of the story yet. Whether the blue tick subscription scheme will continue or not is entirely dependent on Musk. As for regular Twitter users obtaining the verified status, there is still no word on how they are safeguarding the legitimacy of the account user.
More chaos will probably occur with this new feature on Twitter. Identity thefts are more likely to happen.