Twitter Flooded With Fake Accounts, Musk Urgently Stopped The $8-per-month Twitter Blue Check Verified Service

Twitter on Friday suspended its recently announced $8 Blue Verified subscription service, whose new boss Elon Musk is part of the platform's users, amid a spate of fake accounts. Restored the "official" badge.

Until then, the coveted blue tick was reserved for verified accounts of politicians, celebrities, journalists and other public figures. But earlier this week, Twitter launched a new subscription service, Twitter Blue Check, priced at $8, which also supports account verification and is open to anyone who is ready to pay, in order to help Twitter increase its revenue. For now, Musk is trying to retain advertisers.

However, since the launch of the paid authentication service, many fake accounts posing as big names have popped up on Twitter, posing as companies including Musk's Tesla, SpaceX, gaming platform Roblox, Nestle and Lockheed Martin. company. For example, a verified account with the same profile picture as the official Tesla account posted numerous misleading tweets.

US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly has issued an apology after a fake user tweeted that insulin would be free. The high price of insulin has already sparked political backlash and scrutiny. "We apologize to those who received misleading information from fake Lilly accounts," the company said, reiterating its Twitter username.

"In order to combat counterfeiting, we have added 'official' labels to some accounts," the Twitter support account said on Friday. The label was originally launched on Wednesday, but was "killed" by Musk hours later.

The big reversal exemplifies the current chaos on Twitter. Twitter has been in chaos for two weeks since Musk closed the $44 billion deal. Musk fired nearly half of Twitter's staff, replaced its board of directors and executives, and raised the possibility of Twitter going bankrupt. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday it was "deeply watching" Twitter.

“Twitter has been working hard to improve the disinformation problem for the past few years. However, Musk seems to have put those efforts to naught in a matter of weeks,” said AJ Bauer, a professor at the University of Alabama.

Musk has said that Twitter accounts that impersonate other users will be permanently banned without warning without explicitly identifying them as "spoof" accounts. Previously, several fake brand accounts, including Nintendo and BP, had been suspended.