Elon Musk apologises for Twitter being ‘super slow’, promises new feature soon

In a bid to curtail fake accounts on Twitter, new boss Elon Musk said the platform will soon roll out a new feature that will enable organisations to identify accounts associated with them.

“Rolling out soon,” Musk in a tweet on Sunday said. “Twitter will enable organizations to identify which other Twitter accounts are actually associated with them.”

The Tesla CEO also tweeted an apology for how slow Twitter was in some nations. He wrote, “Btw, I’d like to apologize for Twitter being super slow in many countries. App is doing >1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline!”

Though Musk did not provide any more details about it, the proposed new feature comes in the wake of a marked uptick in fraudulent account in recent days that threw the microblogging platform into chaos.

Last week, the company introduced its new $8 per month Twitter Blue subscription for users in the US, UK and a few other countries. Almost immediately, the website was overrun by trolls who used the service to impersonate celebrities and brands.

In particular, the situation was a nightmare for businesses and advertisers. For instance, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and defence major Lockheed Martin lost billions of dollars because of tweets made by impersonated accounts that got the blue check using Twitter’s new paid verification feature.

Facing backlash from users and advertisers, Twitter on Friday paused its blue tick subscription service. It also reintroduced the “Official” gray verification badge for high-profile accounts like brands and celebrities.