Billionaire and Twitter owner Elon Musk said in a social media post Friday that he is going to "sunset" Twitter's legacy Blue Verified system "in a few months."
"Twitter's legacy Blue Verified is unfortunately deeply corrupted," Musk tweeted Friday, "so will sunset in a few months."
The short-lived new blue checkmark verification system offered through an $8 per month subscription rolled out soon after his purchase of the social media giant in October, but was paused quickly due to people paying for the new subscription but then impersonating famous people's accounts, The Hill reported.
In January, Washington Post technology columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler successfully got a blue checkmark for a fictitious account claiming to be Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass.
"The problem is, @SenatorEdMarkey is actually me, not the real Sen. Edward J. Markey," Fowler wrote Jan. 5. "It's a test of Twitter’s $7.99 per month Blue 'verification' service I made with the permission of the real Democrat from Massachusetts. I wouldn't blame anyone for being confused: My test account has the senator's name and photo and a blue checkmark that says it is 'verified.'"
Musk had hoped the new program would make the verification process "rock solid," The Hill reported in November.
"All unpaid legacy Blue checkmarks will be removed in a few months," Musk tweeted at the time.
The blue checkmark verification had previously been reserved for government entities, celebrities, journalists, and corporations the service was able to verify were real to prevent them from being impersonated by regular users.
While the new program was supposed to open up the verifications to everyone willing to pay the monthly subscription price, it quickly showed its flaws when pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company, Lockheed Martin, and Musk's companies Tesla and SpaceX were also impersonated, according to the report.
"It has become chaos," Richard Levick, CEO of public relations firm Levick, told The Hill at the time. "Who buys into chaos?"
According to the report, the new program offered two categories of blue checkmarks, one that included all those with blue checkmarks prior to the rollout and identical checkmarks issued to those purchasing the new subscription service.
"This account is verified because it's notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category," the company said about the prior checkmarks.
The other category noted that the account subscribed to Twitter Blue, according to the report.
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