Report: Twitter Paused Blue Subscriptions to Halt Fraudulent Accounts

After days of users taking advantage of the blue check of Twitter’s redesigned Blue subscription plan to impersonate people and companies, the social media platform has reportedly paused the service.

Twitter Blue — which was a paid service meant to verify the identity of users of accounts — has disappeared as an option on the iOS app, and some members who had paid for the service said the blue check on their account has disappeared, CNBC reported Friday (Nov. 11).

At the same time, the platform restored an “official” badge that it gives to some accounts, according to the report.

Twitter Support said in a Nov. 10 tweet that it had added an “Official” label to some accounts, a day after tweeting that it wasn’t doing so but was “going after impersonation and deception.”

To combat impersonation, we’ve added an “Official” label to some accounts.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 11, 2022

The blue check mark was once reserved for prominent people, but it became available to anyone who signed up for the paid subscription services soon after the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, Reuters reported Friday.

Among the fake accounts that appeared on the platform were some claiming to be the verified accounts of Musk’s own Tesla and SpaceX along with Roblox, Nestlé, Lockheed Martin and Eli Lilly, according to the Reuters report.

In one case, a company issued an apology in response to an uproar that followed the posting of a false claim by a fake account impersonating the firm, the report stated.

Twitter did not immediately respond to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

Twitter debuted and quickly deleted a gray check for verified accounts Wednesday (Nov. 9).

That new symbol — which had been another attempt to designate users’ accounts that had been verified as authentic by the social media platform — appeared for only a few hours before being removed.

Musk suggested at that time that users instead use the blue check that came with a Twitter Blue subscription.

“Blue check will be the great leveler,” he tweeted at the time.