Elon Musk’s latest change to Twitter will be to make government accounts gray and company accounts gold.
By Phillip Moyer | Published
Good news for anyone willing to pay Elon Musk $8 for a Twitter token! According to The Hollywood Reporter, the billionaire plans to restart the verification system next week. The toll mark will remain blue, but the marks identifying governments will be changed to gray and the company marks will be gold.
When Elon Musk launched Twitter’s verification system in early November, the $8 signs were the same color as other account verification marks used to identify official accounts and real people. Twitter’s trust and security team reportedly warned Musk that the move would allow fraudsters and impersonators to abuse the new verification system. Musk launched the new system anyway. Fraudsters and impersonators have taken advantage of the new verification system.
Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter, he seemed dedicated to promoting the blue tick as a status symbol. The new paid checkmark will remain the same color as verified celebrities and other public figures. Elon Musk announced that Twitter will manually verify newly verified accounts, so everyone will know that the blue tick means a real person who paid Elon Musk $8.
Apart from the new verification system, the social media company has undergone several other massive changes in the past month. Elon Musk fired Twitter executives shortly after buying the company. Then he laid off half of Twitter’s staff. It recently announced plans to bring back suspended accounts shortly after former President Donald Trump reactivated his suspended account.
The changes come as Elon Musk tries to make Twitter profitable. He previously said the social media site, which he took on $13 billion in debt to complete its acquisition, was losing $4 million a day.
The changes made by Elon Musk on Twitter were not without results. According to Media Matters for America, advertisers have left the platform in droves. As of November 21, half of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers have stopped advertising on Twitter. These advertisers have paid Twitter $750 million so far in 2022 — roughly $2.3 million per day. That means unless Musk’s changes to the platform this month save about $6 million a day, the company continues to operate at a huge loss.
It’s unclear whether advertisers fleeing Elon Musk’s Twitter will stay away from the platform, which is said to be more active than ever since Musk took the helm. It’s also unclear how popular the new verification system will be, but it should be extremely popular to make up for the company’s stated funding shortfall.
In addition to Twitter’s apparent financial woes, the company is now facing lawsuits from laid-off employees claiming the mass layoffs do not comply with California law. Elon Musk was also sued by fired Twitter workers in Ghana, resulting in Twitter negotiating with workers to offer them legally required severance pay.
Time will tell how Elon Musk’s new Twitter verification system will work. No doubt his reduced staff will be able to successfully remove the identity with the new manual verification system. However, it’s unlikely that enough people will pay $8 a month to offset the company’s daily losses of $4 million — a staggering amount that equates to 15 million paying users.