Twitter’s Safety Team Tried To Warn Musk About Blue’s Disastrous Relaunch, But He Didn’t Listen – SlashGear

Seeing as Twitter Blue started selling verification right away, it didn’t take long for the situation to dissolve into chaos. Plenty of people and companies have been affected by users making “verified” accounts in order to pretend to be someone else, and it was easy enough to fall for. While Nintendo of America allegedly tweeting a picture of Super Mario making a rude gesture is mostly funny, for some, the tweets have been downright cruel. As reported by the Washington Post, a pharmaceutical giant called Eli Lilly saw the value of its stocks plummet after someone impersonated it on Twitter and said that insulin is now free. It took Twitter six hours to remove the tweet. All of this can be traced back to decisions made by the new management with Musk at the helm.

The Verge has gotten ahold of inside information coming from Twitter employees, both current and former. According to these reports, Musk had been informed days before the actual launch that the current strategy for Blue was not going to work. Twitter’s Trust and Safety team prepared a list of warnings, some marked as critical. One such critical warning reads: “Motivated scammers/bad actors could be willing to pay … to leverage increased amplification to achieve their ends where their upside exceeds the cost.” Another warning included the “impersonation of world leaders, advertisers, brand partners, election officials, and other high-profile individuals.”

Ultimately, the rollout of Twitter Blue had to be stopped and no one knows what’s going to happen to it now. One thing is for sure — these types of stunts are not going to help Musk recover advertiser trust, and according to inside sources, many have already pulled out of their advertisement deals with Twitter.