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Elon Musk publicity agreed to a statement made by a user that alleged, previously Twitter employees charged $15,000 for accounts to be verified.

Elon Musk Confirmed Employees At Twitter Previously Charged $15,000 To A User For The Blue Tick

The tweet making the claim can be found here:

Twitter employees were selling verification for upwards of $15,000. For certain accounts, mine included, they would refuse to verify you through the standard application and then privately offer to verify you for $$ behind the scenes.

Investigation needed.

And Elon Musk's response here:

Yup

It seems to me incredibly unlikely that Elon Musk could know anything about backdoor verification deals on Twitter when he has only owned the company for less than a week. Is there any proof behind this claim, and any merit to Elon Musk's confirmation?

Oddthinking
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Zibbobz
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    *Elon replied to the tweet with, "yup".* That isn't "confirmation". It could mean anything, such as "look at what these people are saying", or "if true, this is why I am shaking things up." – Weather Vane Nov 07 '22 at 17:12
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    @WeatherVane : I just linked the actual tweets for context, and I read it more like "yup, this needs to be investigated" rather than actually confirming it happened. But since the question is more about the pay-for-verification thing, I don't think the exact meaning of Musk's tweet matters that much here. – Giter Nov 07 '22 at 19:26
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    Presumably this is alleging it was done privately by corrupt employees, rather than as company policy. Which would make it harder to verify - how do you prove that no employee has ever done a shady deal for verification? – Stuart F Nov 10 '22 at 13:56
  • As a side note, I've heard at least one variation of this/seen one article (can't recall, sorry) where they person was required to make $15k in _ad buys_, rather than a direct payment. That aside, this is also "previously", which isn't necessarily helpful - Twitter policies have changed a lot over the years, especially with regards to verification, and it's possible that at least one version of the policy was "verification is limited to large companies/organizations, because they want to have an official presence here, which includes purchasing ads". – Clockwork-Muse Nov 24 '22 at 21:10

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