Musk Makes A Mess: Twitter's Blue Tick Subscription Halted Amid Parody Account Chaos

Musk Makes A Mess: Twitter's Blue Tick Subscription Halted Amid Parody Account Chaos
All eyes are on Space-X founder Elon Musk as he brings about change after change in the operational model of popular microblogging site Twitter, after acquiring it for $44 billion two weeks ago. In a latest swap, the recent $8 blue tick subscription offer was halted on Friday, as the platform battled a number of imposter accounts.

At the beginning of November, Elon Musk announced that Twitter’s current method of deciding who gets and doesn’t get a verified account was unacceptable. “Power to the people! Blue for $8/month,” he wrote, offering people the chance to get the coveted blue check mark for a fee of $8 a month.

However, on Friday, Musk rolled back the subscription feature as a flurry of imposter accounts hit the website. People had created fake profiles of popular big name brands and using the $8 blue check subscription offer, had made their accounts seem official.

In a few cases, this caused actual stock market crashing for some brands, such as insulin manufacturer Eli Lilly. An imposter account posing as Eli Lilly with the $8 verification badge claimed that the company was giving out free insulin. Shortly after, stocks of the actual company plummeted.

https://twitter.com/rafaelshimunov/status/1591133819918114816

The same thing happened to American aerospace, arms and defence company Lockheed Martin, when a tweet by a fake account with a blue badge went viral, and the company's stock also crashed.

https://twitter.com/litcapital/status/1591172069965713409