Elon Pulls the Plug on Twitter’s ‘Official’ Badge Moments After Rollout
It’s Rewind Time…
Twitter has apparently killed the grey official verification badge, just hours after its rollout. Shortly after Musk responded to MKBHD on Twitter, the badges began to disappear. Yet Esther Crawford, the product manager, assured everyone that the labels are “still going out.”
I just killed it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2022
After the labels were added, opinions were mixed, but many pointed out that they served only to confuse people and did little to improve the overall look of the feed.
Even creators like MKBHD, mrwhosetheboss, iJustine and many more openly sided against the decision.
https://twitter.com/Mrwhosetheboss/status/1590362740547543040?s=20&t=tnlrZOVqRmqHh5E7xR4gEg
Well, looks like you got it right this time, Arun.
This change was met with widespread criticism and pushback from users who felt the badge was useless and unnecessary in the first place.
Twitter already had a verification method in place, so why did they introduce the badges? Because the company’s new CEO had the brilliant idea of charging users $8 per month to keep their precious blue checkmark. Reuters reported that a number of high-profile public figures and government officials were unwilling to pay the world’s richest man.
Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.
We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2022
As such changes have been somewhat of a pattern in all of his past companies, and as his attitude of learning from failures is clearly present here as well, this may not be the last time we see something like this.
