Elon Musk had around half of the employees fired on Twitter. But apparently there are still enough employees to delete profiles that are kidding the new boss.
Elon Musk shouldn’t be particularly happy about the purchase of Twitter at the moment. Twitter is currently deleting verified accounts of users impersonating the multi-billionaire and more or less wittily tweeting in his name.
The affected profiles, like that of the real Musk, have a tick confirming their identity. So they are likely to come from accounts verified by Twitter. Users have now changed their name to Elon Musk, which is perfectly possible but against Twitter Rules. Such renamings have happened again and again in the past. But apparently there are currently a lot of fake Musk profiles, which are easy to recognize as fake.
Musk doesn’t find it funny at all. Profiles impersonating someone else without clearly identifying themselves would be permanently banned, he tweeted. There will no longer be a warning before a user profile is suspended.
The background: Twitter wants to charge eight dollars a month for the use of the coveted tick on a verification badge in the future. So far it’s free. However, not every user could get the tick. Above all, the accounts of celebrities, companies, and users with many followers, such as politicians or journalists, are marked with it.
Musk wants to make the tick part of the Twitter Blue subscription plan. The criticism of it is great. For large newspapers with hundreds of journalists, for example, high fees would be due. In addition, it is unclear whether the tick will really only be given after a precise check of the identity in the future. The “New York Times” reports, citing internal documents, that it doesn’t look like it at the moment. This increases the concern that there will be numerous fake profiles on Twitter in the future, spreading hate messages, hate speech and disinformation.
Twitter updated its app over the weekend, charging $8 a month to use the coveted tick on a verification badge. But according to the New York Times, the company wants to delay the rollout as part of the subscription and wait until after the US midterm elections, which take place on Tuesday.
