Elon Musk suspends launch of paid subscription feature, Twitter Blue a second time

Musk made this disclosure via his verified Twitter page when he announced that the proposed November 29th date he had earlier set for the Twitter Blue launch will no longer be feasible.

He cited the activities of scammers who have gone ahead to impersonate various accounts on the platform as the reason for postponing the launch thus the need to pause the feature until ‘there is high confidence of stopping impersonation.”

Musk also added that Twitter may go ahead to use different colors to differentiate the checks for organizations and individuals. All verified accounts just had one uniform blue checkmark before Musk’s takeover.

Recall after Musk took over Twitter, he proposed a change in the way verified accounts were approved. He announced that verified accounts would now be registered under the paid subscription feature called Twitter Blue and users who signed up to use the feature would be made to part with about $8 monthly.

When the feature eventually came on board, TechCrunch described it as ‘Utter chaos.

There were lots of impersonations as anyone who paid the $8 fee got the verification check and this caused large-scale confusion on the app as scammers registered similar accounts with celebrities, organizations and top government institutions.

Although the defaulting accounts were shut down and the feature was put on hold until the platform was able to get rid of all impersonators, users have queried Musk’s plan for the platform as there have been fears of the growth of misinformation and fake news when the subscription plan comes on board.

There have been arguments that the plan undermines the presence of celebrities and genuine platforms with a presence on the app as the average users found it very easy to identify these verified and genuine accounts with the presence of the check marks prior to Musk's plan.

There are fears the checkmark will be abused as anyone can easily get the verified checkmarks with a sum thus rubbishing the essence of the verification.