NEW YORK –
Twitter on Saturday launched a subscription service for $8 a month that features a blue checkmark now given to verified accounts as new proprietor Elon Musk overhauls the platform’s verification system.
In an replace to Apple iOS gadgets, Twitter stated customers who “enroll now” can obtain the blue checkmark subsequent to their names, “identical to the celebrities, corporations and politicians you already comply with.”
The change represents the tip of Twitter’s present verification system, which was launched in 2009 to stop impersonations of high-profile accounts reminiscent of celebrities and politicians. Twitter earlier than the overhaul had about 423,000 verified accounts, a lot of them rank-and-file journalists from across the globe that the corporate verified no matter what number of followers they’d.
Experts have raised grave considerations about upending the platform’s verification system that, whereas not good, has helped Twitter’s 238 million each day customers decide whether or not the accounts they have been getting info from have been genuine. The replace Twitter made to the iOS model of its app doesn’t point out verification as a part of the brand new “blue verify” system.
It comes a day after the corporate started shedding staff to chop prices. About half of the corporate’s workers of seven,500 was let go, tweeted Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of security & integrity.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on Saturday took blame for such widespread job losses. He had two runs as CEO of Twitter, with the latest stretching from 2015 into 2021.
“I personal the duty for why everyone seems to be on this state of affairs: I grew the corporate dimension too rapidly,” he tweeted. “I apologize for that.”