Twitter doesn't have the tech to remove all legacy Blue ticks

After a messy weekend where Twitter did not remove legacy accounts with Blue check marks as declared earlier, fresh details have emerged that Elon Musk-run company does not have the backend technology to remove around 4.2 lakh legacy accounts with Blue ticks all at once.

According to The Washington Post, there are technical challenges to removing so-called blue ticks quickly at scale and the only way to do it currently is a manual approach.

“Removal of verification badges is a largely manual process powered by a system prone to breaking, which draws on a large internal database — similar to an Excel spreadsheet — in which verification data is stored, according to the former employees,” the report noted.

“In the past, there was no way to reliably remove badges at a bulk scale — prompting workers tackling spam, for example, to have to remove check marks one-by-one. It was all held together with duct tape,” the former employee added.

In a since-deleted tweet, Musk said that legacy verified accounts would be given “a few weeks grace” before seeing their Blue check marks removed.

According to the report, massive changes to Twitter’s verification system risk disrupting the site.

“The removal of verification badges at such a wide scale has the potential to disrupt systems across Twitter’s website, including its recommendation algorithms, spam filters and help center requests,” the report mentioned.

Musk had earlier given a deadline of April 1 to remove all legacy accounts with Blue verification. The company has so far only removed the Blue tick for The New York Times.

— IANS