Musk ‘kills’ Twitter’s ‘official’ grey ticks

The SpaceX founder closed his purchase of Twitter in October for $44billion (£38.1bn) and immediately made controversial changes, including firing 50 percent of Twitter’s workforce. His other pledges included making Twitter a platform for free speech which would see the return of banned accounts, such as that of former President Donald Trump, and introducing a fee for the blue verified tick.Musk’s Twitter takeover has seen a wave of users search for other platforms such as Mastodon, which gained thousands of users over the past week.The Twitter owner introduced a new system of authorisation for specific high-profile accounts.The profiles would feature have a new ‘Official’ grey tick below their name to say that their account was verified.However, within hours of the change being implemented Musk decided to U-turn on his new addition saying on Twitter: “I just killed it.”Mr Musk defended his reversal saying it was “an aesthetic nightmare” and was “another way of creating a two-class system”. Elon Musk reversed his decision for another verification feature on Twitter (Image: Getty)I just killed it- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2022 He said: “Apart from it being an aesthetic nightmare when looking at the Twitter feed…it was simply another way of creating a two-class system.”It wasn’t addressing the core problem.”The comments were made on Wednesday during a live ‘Town Hall’ meeting where the SpaceX founder also noted that the light grey symbol failed to tackle the issue that “there are too many entities that would be considered official or have sort of legacy blue check marks”, he said.However, Musk is still planning to introduce a fee for users with the blue tick on their account which people view as a form verification and therefore a source influence or importance.Musk reiterated that under his leadership Twitter is “going to be extremely vigorous about eliminating deception”.READ MORE: Musk sells nearly £3.5bn of Tesla stockSuper confused with this Twitter Blue stuff. Thought I needed to subscribe to Twitter Blue to keep my verification. I do that, and now it says I’m verified solely because I’m subscribed. If I unsubscribe, will I retain my previous verification, @elonmusk?- Shane Pittman (@StarringShane) November 9, 2022 Twitter’s blue tick will be on a subscription basis (Image: Getty)He added: “So if someone tries to impersonate a brand, that account will be suspended, and we will keep their eight dollars.”And they can keep doing that, and we will just keep their eight dollars again, and again – great – we can do it all day long, they will stop.”So the key point here is if an account is engaged in trickery, we will suspend it.”The $8 (£7) per month fee for the blue verification tick will be open for all Twitter users who will also see less advertisements and will have their tweets more visible on the network.DON’T MISS: Farage could become ‘ultimate headache’ for Sunak’s Tories, allies say (COMMENT)’Writing is on the wall’ for Trump as GOP donors switch to DeSantis (INSIGHT)​​Democrats are ‘popping popcorn’ over looming Trump-DeSantis battle (REVEAL) Mastodon has seen a flood of users after they boycotted Twitter (Image: Getty)However, concerns have emerged that this subscription could increase fraud accounts, misinformation, and scams.Under current plans, the Blue subscribers will be under no pressure to verify who they are as the grey official mark was going to do this.The monthly fee is part of Musk’s plan to generate new revenue streams for the social network which is currently dependent almost entirely on money generated by advertising.However, with the economic downturn, this revenue is slowing down and with the takeover by Musk causing controversy with the proposed plan to bring back banned accounts, advertisers have threatened to step away from Twitter.