Trade watchdog US warns Twitter after chaos with ‘verification check marks’ and employees leave | Tech

Yoel Roth, who was responsible for security and integrity at Twitter, was one of the key contributors who announced his departure on Thursday. Since the takeover by billionaire Elon Musk, he has publicly responded to concerns among users and advertisers about the future of the platform, writes the American newspaper ‘The Washington Post’. Three key employees responsible for Twitter’s security also resigned with him.

The FTC said it is “following developments at Twitter with great concern” and called on the company to continue to comply with all privacy and security requirements. “No CEO or company is above the law,” said the watchdog.

Musk would have warned Twitter employees on Thursday, two weeks after he took over the platform for $ 44 billion (more than 43 billion euros), of a possible bankruptcy. If the company doesn’t raise enough money on the newly introduced subscription to get a blue check, Twitter may not survive the next economic downturn, according to the world’s richest man.

Twitter implemented the new order announced by Musk on Wednesday in assigning verification checks. In the past, these were only given to celebrities, politicians and companies after an assessment. In the new system, anyone willing to pay $8 ($7.85) per month will receive such a checkmark, without identity verification. The checkmark will look the same in both cases.

It was already clear on Wednesday that Twitter is still investigating what works and what does not work. Twitter was testing with an “official” stamp, which was taken offline a few hours later. You can now simply buy the blue tick of the payment service ‘Twitter Blue’. The only difference is that if you click on the badge, it will tell you if it was given to a leading person or if it was paid for by a Twitter Blue subscriber. If you just scroll past it looks exactly the same.

Twitterers have already been able to use the new blue check policy in recent days to create fake accounts and pretend to be verified users of the platform. People pretended to be “Nintendo of America” ​​and tweeted Mario Bros sticking out his middle finger.

But basketball star LeBron James couldn’t escape this Twitter frenzy either. His verified parody account tweeted that he wanted to switch teams, so it doesn’t match the truth.

Even Jesus has been verified.

These privacy concerns may factor into the FTC’s decision to issue a warning.