According to cnbc.com, the general purpose of the broadcast was to reassure advertisers, some of which have paused their campaigns following Musk’s acquisition of the platform. One of the first subjects Elon touched on during the broadcast was enabling monetisation for creators in a way that’s competitive with the alternatives.
He then moved on to outline one of the benefits of the new USD 8 monthly Twitter subscription, and how it would tie in with a potential Twitter payments system. Once authenticated into the payments system, Twitter users could hold a balance on their accounts and could send money to other users. Musk even suggested pre-populating those accounts and allowing users to send the money anywhere within Twitter.
To transfer their money out of Twitter, users would need to attach an authenticated bank account to their Twitter account. The final step would be to offer a compelling money market account to get a high yield on the user’s balance, which could then lead to Twitter adding debit cards and checks.
While the aforementioned foray into the payments space is purely conceptual at the time of writing, Elon Musk did warn via a tweet on 9 November 2022 that Twitter will undergo various changes in the coming months.
According to CNN, Following the launch of a new paid verification system, the platform has witnessed a surge in celebrity and corporate impersonators, which has led to multiple verified Twitter accounts being suspended. The fake verified accounts had posed as former President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Nintendo of America, the basketball player LeBron James, and the software company Valve.
Cybersecurity experts warned that this trend could quickly lead to bad actors impersonating first responders or other government accounts. The system basically allows Twitter users to purchase a blue check mark for their profiles using their phone numbers and credit cards, but without providing any identity verification. According to Musk, the system aims to raise spammers’ costs and will deter even wealthy bad actors as they would eventually run out of credit card and phone numbers.
Twitter also briefly introduced a new, grey verification badge designed to label government accounts, major brands, and media outlets but the system was scrapped just a few hours after launch. In another tweet, Elon Musk revealed that the people behind the social media platform will experiment with new features in the coming months and that they will keep what works and change what doesn’t.
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