Elon Musk warns Twitter will do "lots of dumb things in coming months"

Nov. 9 (UPI) -- Elon Musk warned Twitter users on Wednesday that the social media platform "will do lots of dumb things in coming months."

"We will keep what works & change what doesn't," he wrote in the same tweet.

Musk also said Wednesday that he axed the idea of a second, gray verification checkmark, which appeared briefly on some accounts on Wednesday, before vanishing just as quickly.

"I just killed it." Musk tweeted, responding to producer Marques Brownlee who was questioning how the short-lived double verification system worked.

Later in the day, Twitter's head of early stage products, Esther Crawford tweeted that the platform's "official" label will still be rolled out.

"The official label is still going out as part of the @TwitterBlue launch -- we are just focusing on government and commercial entities to begin with. What you saw him mention was the fact that we're not focusing on giving individuals the 'Official' label right now," Crawford tweeted, clarifying Musk's comment.

"There are no sacred cows in product at Twitter anymore. 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," she wrote later.

Musk recently announced his plan to charge nearly $8 monthly for a blue verification check mark on Twitter profiles is taking shape with the Apple App Store confirming the change to Twitter Blue.

The once highly sought after blue checkmark will cost $7.99 per month and will soon be available to users in the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. More countries will eventually be included.

Musk is continuing to make big changes to the social media platform, which he bought for $44 billion at the end of October.

"The issue is that creating a fake account is extremely cheap, it maybe is a tenth of a penny," Musk said during a public discussion on Wednesday, aimed at calming potential advertisers and users.

"By charging $8 a month, it raises the cost of a bot or troll by somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000. Wouldn't a state actor have $8 million a day to create a million fake accounts? Well, yes, they've got the budget. But here's the problem. They don't have a million credit cards, and they don't have a million phones. That's the actual kicker. There's no way to overcome that. And we will be vigorously pursuing any impersonation."