Twitter to re-launch blue tick subscription service after first chaotic rollout backfired

Twitter is preparing to relaunch its “Blue” paid subscription service for users who want a blue check and other features after an initial rollout included a wave of parody accounts posing as brands, embarrassing Elon Musk and his newly purchased platform.

Twitter Blue will relaunch on 12 December with an $8 monthly subscription tier, or $11 a month for iOS users, the company announced on Sunday.

A previous verification system in place for the last several years used blue ticks for government officials, high-profile individuals, journalists and other notable figures and institutions to clearly identify real people and affirm the authenticity of the account.

Under the new system, users who pay into the Blue subscription will receive a blue check mark as well as the ability to edit tweets, upload 1080p video, and use the platform in reader mode to make it easier to read longer threads.

The platform will also begin replacing “the ‘official’ label with a gold checkmark for businesses, and later in the week a grey checkmark for government and multilateral accounts,” according to the company announcement.

Last month, impersonators were able to sign up for the newly launched paid blue tick service and fire off messages while posing as pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, writing that “we are excited to announce insulin is free now” – a nine-word post that likely cost Twitter millions of dollars in ad revenue while drawing Musk, Twitter and Eli Lilly into a national political debate about the exploding costs of healthcare and prescription drugs.

“Chiquita” announced the fruit company had “just overthrown the government of Brazil.” An account impersonating a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group wrote that it “[heart emoji] apartheid.” An account posing as Musk’s Tesla bragged about using child labour and issued a breaking news tweet that a “second Tesla has hit the World Trade Center.”

Ad sales account for 90 percent of Twitter’s overall revenue, and several advertisers have abandoned the platform in the aftermath of the free speech absolutist’s $44bn takeover and concerns about a decline in content moderation and tools to prevent offensive messages appearing alongside brands shelling for timeline space.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate’s recent analysis of Brandwatch analytics found a significant “uptick” in hateful and sexist language on the platform within the same time frame that Musk claimed the company’s “strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged” and that hateful speech declined to “below our prior norms”.

An analysis from NewsGuard with data from NewsWhip also found that Twitter’s most popular untrustworthy accounts saw their engagements increase by more than 57 per cent within Musk’s first week at the helm.

Posts from the 25 most-followed Twitter accounts tracked by NewsWhip and associated with publishers that NewsGuard identified as “repeatedly spreading false information” received more than 3 million likes and shares, the report found.