Musk to relaunch Blue verification, but phone number is a requirement

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
11 Dec 2022 12:36

The “official” label initially planned will be traded for a gold checkmark for businesses and a gray one for “government and multilateral accounts."

Elon Musk's Twitter (9to5Google)

Twitter is relaunching its Blue subscription on Monday a month after it threw it to the side following an ensuing chaos. The subscription will either cost $8 per month to purchase on the web or $11 per month via the iOS App Store, with the extra $2 as a 30% commission for Apple - they will need to register a phone number first though.

#Twitter has been heading straight into the eye of a storm!
Twitter on Friday paused its recently announced $8 blue check subscription service as fake accounts rushed to impersonate politicians, companies, and even celebrities.#TwitterTakeover pic.twitter.com/IcvR51gyRA
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) November 13, 2022

Among new changes, editing the “handle, display name, or profile photo” will temporarily remove the checkmark until the account is reviewed again.

Twitter confirmed in a post that subscribers will get access to other features, such as editing tweets, uploading 1080p videos, and accessing reader mode, as well as fewer ads and prioritization in search and replies as “coming soon".

The “official” label initially planned will be traded for a gold checkmark for businesses and a gray one for “government and multilateral accounts” later this week.

The company's product manager, Esther Crawford, relayed that the phone verification step is a requirement for users to be given a blue checkmark in order to avoid impersonation attempts. The Verge reported that Musk told the platform's employees that he won't be relaunching Blue until he is "confident about significant impersonations not happening.”

In addition to requiring Blue subscribers to provide a verified phone number, Musk previously said accounts will “be manually authenticated” before the blue checkmark appears on their profiles.

As part of the changes, Musk's intention to reduce content monitoring on the site alarmed UN rights chief, Volker Turk, last month, who urged him to make human rights a priority for the social network. "Twitter has a responsibility to avoid amplifying content that results in harm to people's rights," Turk said in his open letter.

The Twitter Files

In a recent controversial moment, Musk has given journalists data, giving an extension of the latest controversial scandal exposing Democrat censorship and corruption, The Twitter Files. A third extension was released by the same journalist, Matt Taibbi, last month.

The latest installment, named "Part One" of the "Removal of Donald Trump," exposes internal Slack communications between high-level Twitter executives, including the former Trust and Safety Head Yoel Roth, former Trust and Policy Chief Vijaya Gadde, Deputy General Counsel and former FBI lawyer Jim Baker, and former Twitter Election & Crisis Response Lead Patrick Conlon, who previously worked in intelligence for the US Department of Defense.

The exposure shows that the aforementioned Twitter execs worked closely with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence - which supervises all US intelligence departments.

Twitter executives made decisions arbitrarily, and they were even planning to seek revenge against accounts they were unable to dig dirt on with stricter measures in the future.