Elon Musk-owned Twitter restored the “Official” badge to user profiles after the social media company had taken it away a few days ago, according to a report from Reuters.
The news comes after the $7.99 subscription option for the blue checkmark verification disappeared for users on the platform.
The “official” badge is an attempt to stave off fake accounts after several were created impersonating large brands on the platform.
Several fake accounts popped up for large brands bearing the blue check, including Musk’s own SpaceX and Tesla, as well as other brands such as Roblox, Nestle and Lockheed Martin.
Elon Musk Sold Tesla Stock to ‘Save’ Twitter, Says Report https://t.co/kNw3HQVG2R
— TeslaNorth.com (@RealTeslaNorth) November 11, 2022
“To combat impersonation, we’ve added an ‘Official’ label to some accounts,” Twitter’s support account tweeted on Friday.
One such account included insulin manufacturer Eli Lilly, which had an impersonating account post that insulin would become free amidst public scrutiny over insulin prices.
“We apologize to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account,” the company wrote on Twitter.
Musk said last month that the Twitter verification option would “destroy the bots,” adding on Wednesday that he planned to make the platform a force for truth, vowing to put an end to fake and spam accounts.
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As someone who ran a shop with employees and different jobs and operations, I can definitely relate to Musk’s challenges at Twitter in that it is a mess and needs to be straightened out with his only roadmap…..trial and error. Try this and if it helps, iterate further, if it doesn’t, eliminate it. He is working at “warp” speed compared to “normal” CEOs and so will be finding solutions and problems at super fast speed. I can see the Blue Check as a great start and as a user, if I had the choice of eliminating everything but verified accounts, including impersonating Tweets being marked and being optional reads, I could streamline and customize the content I want. If enough others chose to weed out stuff, maybe the posters would decide it isn’t worth it to post their crap and therefore “police” themselves a bit better too. It will be interesting to see what evolves, I know it will be good because the best brains and engineers are working on it now. Let all the squawkers and bashers squawk and bash, they only show their own limited imaginations, patience and tolerances.