Elon Musk Confirms Twitter Employees Sold Verification Badges ‘Behind the Scenes’

Elon Musk on Saturday confirmed claims that Twitter employees were selling verification badges for certain users.
“Twitter employees were selling verification for upwards of $15,000. For certain accounts, mine included, they would refuse to verify you through the standard application and then privately offer to verify you for $$ behind the scenes. Investigation needed,” a user, WSBChairman—which has 900,000 followers—claimed Saturday on the platform. Musk confirmed that users claim, responding: “Yup.”
Neither WSBChairman nor Musk provided further details or evidence. Meanwhile, no prominent former Twitter executives have publicly commented on the matter.
“Far too many legacy ‘verified’ checkmarks were handed out, often arbitrarily, so in reality they are *not* verified,” Musk also wrote. “You can buy as many as you want right now with a Google search. Piggybacking off payment system plus Apple/Android is a much better way to ensure verification.”…