Big Twitter Roll-up: Blue Checkmarks, Banning Critics, and the Mysterious John Mastodon

A lot of Twitter-related stories recently submitted, so here's a rollup to put them all in one place for your convenience, or so that you can easily bypass it.

Twitter Will Require Phone Number Verification to Purchase a Twitter Blue Subscription

upstart writes:

Twitter will require phone number verification to purchase a Twitter Blue subscription:

After announcing the relaunch of Twitter Blue over the weekend, Twitter updated its terms to require phone number verification for users who want to purchase the subscription. The company said that if you haven't verified your phone number, you will be prompted to do so while buying the subscription plan.

What's more, the company may also prevent users who have changed their handle (username), display name or profile picture within the last seven days from purchasing the Twitter Blue subscription.

[...] Last month, Musk mentioned that all accounts undergoing verification will be manually verified - which was exactly the process Twitter followed with legacy verification.

All these steps are aimed at preventing impersonation and spam. When Elon Musk's version of Twitter Blue with a verification mark first launched in November, a ton of accounts began to ape brands, celebrities and athletes. The mayhem caused by that forced Musk to pause the program until there were steps in place to prevent that from happening again.

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.