Awash with fake accounts, Twitter shifted gears early Friday and quietly suspended its $8-a-month “Twitter Blue” account verification scheme while announcing it would add an “Official” label to some accounts — about 19 hours after it said such designations were not being handed out.
The conflicting announcements about the “official label” sat on top of each other as two tweets in the verified Twitter Support account feed Friday, prompting mockery across the social media platform, with commenters calling it “post-satire” and noting sarcastically the company should create a system for verifying accounts, like a check mark.
Oddly, while some users posted screenshots of the Twitter Support announcement with an “official” badge below the screen name, the tag was not visible to all users.