Yesterday, Twitter started rolling out its new revamped Twitter Blue subscription, allowing anyone with £6.99 UK or $7.99 US to pay for a “verified account.” However, just a day later, Twitter has now stopped offering this, following countless fake and impersonators starting abusing the system. Users who have joined on or after 9th November are not currently able to sign up for verification.
Can't imagine why all the advertisers are pulling out of Twitter lmao pic.twitter.com/pg55WXkxhS
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) November 9, 2022
For example, yesterday a fake Nintendo of America account tweeted a photo of Mario showing his middle finger, which resulted in the actual Nintendo account receiving some complaints from confused users. A fake account claiming to be Valve also shared a tweet advertising a competing platform and the list goes on and on.
Twitter hasn’t yet explained why new users can’t sign up for Twitter Blue at the moment, simply saying:
“Twitter accounts created on or after November 9, 2022 will be unable to subscribe to Twitter Blue at this time.”
It is unclear currently for exactly how long Twitter will restrict new users from purchasing Twitter Blue. Likely until it can work out a system for weeding out impersonators. However, so far the company has been pretty quick to bring down the content which shouldn’t be posted.
Yesterday, Twitter did experiment with a new “Official” checkmark for public figures and companies. However, this has been removed for the time being and will only be rolling out to “government and commercial entities” first.
