Elon Musk, the newly appointed CEO of Twitter, has stated that the business will delay the debut of its premium verification membership service until it is certain that celebrity account impersonations will no longer occur.

The Tesla CEO announced last month that he would alter the verification process for the microblogging platform by giving a blue tick to anyone who paid $8 and subscribed to Twitter Blue. He acquired the social media company for $44 billion.

He had argued that by adding a paid tier to Twitter, spam and fake accounts would be weeded out because they wouldn’t be willing to pay to gain traction on the platform.

Soon after the rollout of the $8 subscription service earlier this month, however, the platform descended into chaos after several users purchased verified badges and began to impersonate public personalities and organisations.

Last week, the world’s richest man and new owner of Twitter had said the platform’s $8 per month Blue subscription service would be made available again on 29 November.

“Punting relaunch of Blue Verified to November 29th to make sure that it is rock solid,” he said last week.

But in a meeting with employees on Monday, he reportedly said the paid verification subscription’s launch would be put on hold until there is “high confidence” in protecting against “significant impersonations”.

“We might launch it next week. We might not,”  Musk said, according to a report by The Verge.

On Tuesday morning, November 22, Musk confirmed the report.

“Holding off relaunch of Blue Verified until there is high confidence of stopping impersonation,” the Tesla CEO tweeted.

Musk, in his tweet, also said Twitter may use a “different colour check” to verify organisations.

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