Elon Musk was warned by Twitter’s safety team AGAINST his $8-a-month blue tick marks

Elon Musk was reportedly warned by Twitter‘s Trust and Safety Team about the chaos that would ensue on the platform over his $8-a-month blue check mark system. 

Musk, his lawyers, and Esther Crawford, the director of product management who has risen as one of the Chief Twit’s top lieutenants, were all presented with a seven-page document listing the consequences of the system a week before its launched, Platformer reports. 

The coveted blue check mark was previously reserved for verified accounts of politicians, famous personalities, journalists and other public figures.

But a subscription option, open to anyone prepared to pay, was rolled out last week to help Twitter grow revenue as Musk fights to retain advertisers.

However, the platform was quickly flooded with impersonation accounts of notable people and companies, creating the type of chaos Musk and his team were directly warned about in the November 1 documents from the Trust and Safety Team. 

‘Motivated scammers/bad actors could be willing to pay… to leverage increased amplification to achieve their ends where their upside exceeds the cost,’ the documents acquired by Platformer read. 

The documents labeled Musk’s plan as ‘P0,’ signaling that they fell within the highest risk category for the social media website.    

Along with warning that trolls could sow chaos on Twitter, the team said, ‘Impersonation of world leaders, advertisers, brand partners, election officials, and other high profile individuals’ represented another P0 risk.

It ultimately warned Musk that a flood of impersonations and impulse buys to make fun of companies for only $8 could drive away advertisers for good. 

Among the companies who saw the greatest impact from the rise in fake accounts last week was Eli Lilly and Lockheed Martin, who saw billions wiped off their shares following controversial tweets from impersonation accounts. 

Eli Lilly, one the nations largest supplier of insulin, saw its stock value plummet by more than 4 percent, The Washington Post reported, about $15billion, after a fake account using Musk’s verification system tweeted: ‘We are excited to announce insulin is now free.’ 

On Friday, Eli Lilly executives ordered a halt to all Twitter ad campaigns, the Post reported. They also paused their Twitter publishing plan for all corporate accounts around the world.

Lockheed Martin, which produces aerospace equipment and arms for world governments, saw a similar loss after an impersonation account tweeted: ‘We will begin halting all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States until further investigation into their record of human rights abuses. #WeAreLM.’

Other companies that fell victim to fake accounts included Pepsi, Nestle and even BP Global, one of the world’s largest oil providers.  

Musk was also warned that the company may not have enough manpower to police all the fake verified accounts while at the same time removing the blue checkmark from legacy accounts who refuse to cough up the $8-a-month price tag.

‘Given that we will have a large amount of legacy verified users on the platform (400K Twitter customers), and that we anticipate we’ll need to debadge a large number of legacy verified accounts if they decide not to pay for Blue, this will require high operational lift without investment,’ the documents read. 

The warning about the lack of staffing came before Musk elected to lay off roughly half of Twitter employees, which was followed by a sudden U-turn where some of the fired workers were asked to come back because they were actually needed. 

Twitter did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment. 

Following the mayhem that befell Twitter over the new check mark system, Musk put a paused on it, as well as a follow-up pitch to label real accounts with an ‘Official’ check mark. 

‘Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months,’ Musk tweeted hours into the chaos. 

Crawford, who has risen the ranks of Musk’s inner circle and reportedly knew about the Trust and Safety team’s warning, defended her new boss. 

‘There are no sacred cows in product at Twitter anymore,’ she tweeted. ‘Elon is willing to try lots of things — many will fail, some will succeed. The goal is to find the right mix of successful changes to ensure the long-term health and growth of the business.’

Advertisers have pulled out in large numbers, scared by the tumult and bad publicity, and Musk – who took out a large loan to buy the firm – soon faces the prospect of being saddled with immense debt, which could bankrupt Twitter.

The Tesla CEO has controversially said he wants the blue tick to be available to all paying customers. He said opening the verification process up to more people will help democratize Twitter and cut down on the spam and bot accounts on the site.

But critics have said this opens the door to confusion, impersonation and the further spread of misinformation.

Musk tweeted late on Thursday that all parody accounts must have ‘parody’ in their username as an attempt to crack down on the confusion.

Several top security and privacy experts at the company have also resigned amid the controversial changes.

Among them was Yoel Roth, whose job title was head of safety and integrity. Roth was involved in the decision to censor reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop – a decision which the then-CEO Jack Dorsey said he regretted. 

It is unclear why Roth left the company despite his endorsement from Musk for reducing views of harmful content in search results by 95 percent. 

Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran and Chief Compliance Officer Marianne Fogarty also resigned, according to an internal message posted to Twitter’s Slack messaging system, as well as Twitter’s Chief Security Officer Lea Kissner.