Twitter begins $7.99 monthly fee for verified accounts

Twitter on Saturday started a subscription service for $7.99 a month that includes a blue check now given to verified accounts as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the platform’s verification system just ahead of midterm elections.

In an update to Apple iOS devices, Twitter said users who “sign up now” can receive the blue check next to their names “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.” So far, verified accounts do not appear to be losing their checks.

Anyone being able to get the blue check could lead to confusion and the rise of disinformation ahead of Tuesday’s elections if possible impostors pay for the subscription and use the names of politicians and election officials. Along with widespread layoffs that began Friday, many fear the social platform that public agencies, election boards, police departments and news outlets use to keep people reliably informed could become lawless if content moderation and verification are chipped away.

The change represents the end of Twitter’s current verification system, which began in 2009 to prevent impersonations of highprofile accounts such as celebrities and politicians. Before the overhaul, Twitter had about 423,000 verified accounts, many of them rank-and-file journalists from around the globe that the company verified regardless of how many followers they had.

Experts have raised grave concerns about upending the platform’s verification system that, while not perfect, has helped Twitter’s 238 million daily users determine whether the accounts they were getting information from were authentic.

The update Twitter made to the iOS version of its app does not mention verification as part of the new blue check system.

The change comes a day after the company began laying off workers to cut costs and as more companies are pausing advertising on Twitter as a cautious corporate world waits to see how it will operate under its new owner. About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, tweeted Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity.

He said the company’s frontline content moderation staff was the group the least affected by the job cuts and that “efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combating state-backed information operations — remain a top priority.”

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on Saturday took blame for the job losses. He had two runs as CEO of Twitter, the most recent stretching from 2015 into 2021.

“I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly,” he tweeted. “I apologize for that.”