Musk ignored Twitter staff’s warning that scammers would abuse paid verification

Elon Musk ignored internal warnings from Twitter's trust and safety team when he rolled out his failed paid verification scheme, according to an article co-published by Platformer and The Verge. About a week before the November 9 launch of Musk's revamped Twitter Blue subscription, which gave users who pay $8 per month a blue checkmark even if they weren't previously verified, the trust and safety team circulated "a seven-page list of recommendations intended to help Musk avoid the most obvious and damaging consequences of his plans for Blue," the article said.

"Motivated scammers/bad actors could be willing to pay... to leverage increased amplification to achieve their ends where their upside exceeds the cost," the document said. This warning was "labeled 'P0' to denote a concern in the highest risk category," the Platformer/Verge article said.

Detailing another P0 risk, the trust and safety team warned the paid checkmarks could lead to "impersonation of world leaders, advertisers, brand partners, election officials, and other high-profile individuals... Legacy verification provides a critical signal in enforcing impersonation rules, the loss of which is likely to lead to an increase in impersonation of high-profile accounts on Twitter."

The problems Twitter employees warned of arose quickly after the Twitter Blue rollout, as scammers eagerly paid $8 for checkmarks that made it easy to impersonate prominent accounts. Musk halted the paid verification scheme after only two days, although Musk said it would "probably" be reinstated by the end of next week.

Musk seeks revenue as advertisers flee

Musk is aiming to make Twitter Blue a major source of revenue, with paid verification as the major draw for people who wouldn't otherwise subscribe. "We need roughly half of our revenue to be subscription," he reportedly told employees in an email last week.

A Twitter help page says users who "receive the blue checkmark as part of a Twitter Blue subscription will not undergo review to confirm that they meet the active, notable and authentic criteria that was used in the previous process." Despite the lack of vetting, accounts that paid for Twitter Blue were denoted as "Verified accounts" when clicking on the user profile's checkmark.

Some big companies stopped advertising on Twitter even before the paid-verification rollout, causing what Musk called "a massive drop in revenue." After his paid-verification scheme led to a new rash of official-looking fake accounts, Musk said a forthcoming feature would help corporations avoid impersonation. "Rolling out soon, Twitter will enable organizations to identify which other Twitter accounts are actually associated with them," he wrote Sunday.

The internal report prepared before the paid-verification rollout "offers a wish list for features that would make the product safer and easier to use, most of which have not been approved," the Platformer/Verge article said. The internal report also warned, "Removing privileges and exemptions from legacy verified accounts could cause confusion and loss of trust among high profile users."

The Musk-led Twitter did adopt the trust and safety team's recommendation to use an "Official" badge to identify some high-profile accounts, regardless of whether they paid for a verification checkmark. But Musk pulled the Official label just hours after it launched, the same day the Twitter Blue changes took effect.