Twitter's premium service, which granted a blue verification badge to anyone for $8 a month became unavailable soon after it was launched by the new company boss Elon Musk, following widespread impersonation of celebrities, government officials and organisations. A new report claims that Musk ignored internal warnings about the paid verification scheme and launched the premium subscription service at $7.99 per month.
According to a report by The Verge, Twitter's trust and safety team had prepared a list of recommendations intended to avoid the most obvious and damaging consequences of Musk's plans for Blue. The document obtained by Platformer had predicted accurately some of the events that followed.
“Motivated scammers/bad actors could be willing to pay … to leverage increased amplification to achieve their ends where their upside exceeds the cost,” reads the document’s first recommendation, which the team labeled “P0” to denote a concern in the highest risk category, the report added.
Twitter's trust and safety team had also warned about the impersonation of world leaders, advertisers, brand partners, election officials and other high-profile individuals and that represented another P0 risk, according to The Verge report. However, Musk announced the launch despite the warnings.
To recall, the Twitter subscription service had a chaotic start. The “blue check” was supposed to be given with the aim of preventing impersonation. However, it led to the service being availed by anyone for $8 a month.
There were two “blue checks” categories that looked identical. One category included the accounts verified before Musk purchased the micro-blogging site and took over, and noted: “This account is verified because it’s notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category”. The other noted that the account subscribes to Twitter Blue.
The new service was severely affected by impostors -- with users parodying everyone from Pope Francis to George W Bush. The pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co was forced to apologise after an impostor account tweeted that insulin was free. Nintendo, Lockheed Martin, Musk’s own Tesla, and SpaceX have also impersonated as well as the accounts of various professional sports figures, as per news agency AP.