After a lot of negotiations and threats of legal action, Elon Musk finally took over Twitter. Even though it has just been a few days, he has made quite a few changes. He started by firing Twitter executives including CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal. This was followed by a plan that led to a huge uproar- Twitter Blue.
Twitter Blue is an opt-in monthly subscription which provides a blue tick (the one that celebrities have) and offers early beta access to select new features such as editing tweets. The introductory offer costs $7.99 per month. Essentially, anyone who is willing to pay $8 each month, can get a blue tick on their account. On most social media platforms, the blue tick is associated with the account being verified. So when people started using Twitter Blue, it was only natural that they confused the Twitter Blue accounts with verified accounts. This led to more confusion than Musk probably anticipated. Some of it was harmless like confusing random tweets with celebrities’ tweets. Some of the confusion led cost companies billions in the stock market.
The shares of pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly dipped 4.37% to US $352.30- erasing over $15 billion in market cap- after a Twitter Blue account with the same name as the brand announced that the brand is providing insulin for free.
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This tweet was online for hours and attracted multiple retweets and likes before people realised that this wasn’t actually Eli Lilly and Company’s twitter account! However, the damage had been done on the stock market. Soon after, the imposter account lost it’s blue tick and tweets have been set to private.
The actual Eli Lilly account responded by apologising and reiterating that their official account is @LillyPad.
The whole idea behind the paid blue tick was to make money. Technically speaking, Musk achieved this goal as people used this tool to mercilessly impersonate others. Some users even created multiple accounts to mimic influencers and big corporations. This has led to some hilarious and sometimes insulting threads.
The impersonations have reached new extremes… There exists a fake twitter account for the American division of the video games company Nintendo (named Nintendo of America), which posted a picture of their beloved character Mario, flipping his finger. Users thought this was very out-of-character for the mascot. @KellytoyMario responded with “Mario would never do that :(” They received a reply from the same account saying, “well he did.” However, the account was deactivated before they could damage the Mario’s innocence.
Some of the tweets and impersonations also took a darker turn. An account pretending to be former U.S. president George W. Bush made some questionable statements and was tagged with a “gaming” status. One of his tweets said “I miss killing Iraqis.” They received a reply from an account with the name MPTonyBlair with the words “Same tbh”. Both of the accounts have been suspended since.
When Lockheed Martin, one of the major military contractors in the world, was impersonated with the account name LockheedMartini, the jokes made their way into into the geopolitical sphere.
The account tweeted: “We will begin halting all weapon sales to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States until further investigation into their record of human right abuses,” with the hashtag #WeAreLM. However, they did not issue a clarification about their stance on alleged human right abuses.
The twitter account @jesus, which has existed for years, was also the recipient of a blue checkmark.
In a world where we are surrounded by data, it is already tough to tell what to believe and what not to. Twitter Blue has just added to this confusion. They did anticipate that something like this would happen, but not to this extent. For this they added certain safeguards. For example, if you click on the blue tick on people’s profile, you can tell whether they paid $8 or not. Musk also confirmed that they will roll out “official” badges for notable companies and other entities and people- a grey badge found under the user’s name (source: TheStar).
For the time being, they have stopped adding new subscriptions to Twitter Blue and roll-outs in new countries because of all the backlash. Musk still believes that with some tweaks here and there, this will be a successful model. It certainly caught people’s attention and generated some revenue from the subscriptions. Only time and updates will tell whether it’s a viable model or not.
The Echo-nomist 
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