Elon Musk announced on Friday that anyone who tries to impersonate another person using a new verification service, to be launched next week, will be suspended.
Musk’s tweet warning came in response to a question that followed his earlier tweet announcing a new launch date for Twitter Blue. He also explained about the new color coding system for verified ticks. Musk said, “Gold checks for companies, gray checks for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before the check is activated. Painful, but necessary.”
Willful impersonation/cheating will result in account suspension.
Organizational affiliation, bio and follower count differentiate between people who actually have the same name.
We’ll see how it goes.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2022
Musk further replied on the same thread, saying that one way to distinguish an impersonator from a person’s real account is by ‘organisational affiliation, bio and follower count’.
While Musk has a point about affiliation and number of followers, it is not always the case that a user will go so far as to investigate and still believe the impersonator to be a real account like the last time Twitter Blue was live. and saw too many impersonators. A user had pointed this out to him.
Musk then responded that Twitter would consider other steps if the suspension is not sufficient to indicate that it is a trial-and-error approach to resolving the issue.
If it really becomes a problem, we will take that and other steps
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2022
Twitter Blue is one of Elon Musk’s projects that he has started since he acquired the company. It provides benefits to the users who can avail this monthly subscription for $8 per month. Some of its benefits include the ability to undo tweets, post longer video and audio tweets, and the newly added verification feature that will give a user a blue tick next to their name. Earlier, blue ticks were given only to celebrities, organizations or people in the public eye.
