Twitter is taking a new turn – you can now become whomever you want to be, and for the price of $8, you can get a verified badge to give you some legitimacy.

Barely two weeks after Elon Musk’s takeover, Twitter has made some major changes, including laying off half of its employees, which has prompted a class action suit against the new management. Many of the social media platform’s top advertisers have also halted their advertising, leading to a major financial threat to the company. The app’s previous verification system, which ensured everyone verified was who they claimed to be, was replaced with a payment system.

For $8, anyone can set up a Twitter account by whichever name they like and get a verification mark, which used to signify that the account belonged to a verified individual, but now it seems that verification mark will mean nothing, but will bring in revenue. 

Problem is, you won’t really know who is sending out the tweets you may have come to trust in the past. 

On Thursday, verified accounts of two famous people caused an uproar on Twitter for their inappropriate posts. An account for the allegedly ex-president  “George W Bush” tweeted that he missed murdering Iraqis. An account for supposed UK ex-prime minister Tony Blair responded by saying that he also missed killing Iraqis.

Although the accounts were both fake, their tweets had gained much attention by the time Twitter suspended them and deleted them, which was nine hours later. That’s plenty of time to go viral. 

Last week, Twitter’s chief privacy officer, information officer, and compliance officer resigned. Engineers will have to meet the Federal Trade Commission’s requirements and laws independently in their absence.

The departure of the three senior employees will expose Twitter and other employees to legal liability after the company agreed with the Federal Trade Commission in May to stop misusing private data from its users to target its advertisements.

One of the company’s privacy team lawyers told employees to get whistleblower protection if they got tasked with doing something they felt uncomfortable doing.

The lawyer wrote an internal letter saying that Elon Musk had made it clear that he only wanted to recoup the money he spent buying Twitter after he failed to get out of his binding agreement to buy the platform.

The lawyer continued to say that Twitter’s current head of the legal department, Alex Spiro, had said that Musk was willing to take huge risks when it came to the company. Because he put rockets into space, Musk was not afraid of the Federal Trade Commission.

Several big advertisers halted their spending on the platform after Musk bought the company. The advertisers were concerned about how Musk, a freedom of speech advocate, would deal with controversial tweets.

Even though the platform has not changed its policies on moderation or enforcement, Musk’s behavior has put the country on edge. Reports showed that the use of racial slurs and hate speech tripled in just a week after Musk took over.

Musk held a meeting with the remaining employees on Thursday and told them the company might go bankrupt. On Wednesday, before the meeting, he held a Q&A session on Twitter to convince advertisers that they had nothing to be afraid of, telling them to imagine Twitter as an inclusive town.

The session did little to reduce advertisers’ worries, and just hours after, numerous fake, yet verified, Twitter accounts started posting inappropriate tweets.