Elon Musk announces his latest Twitter verification plan
In the dark depths of a Twitter reply chain, Elon Musk has revealed more details and even a new timeline for his overhauled verification system for the platform.
After previously teasing that the blue ticks for verified accounts could change color, Musk confirmed on Friday that organizations would be receiving gold checks shortly and that government officials would have gray checks as early as next week.
In a reply to The Crypto King and former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, Musk added that all other verified individuals, “celebrity or not,” would keep the original blue ticks. But they are also all authenticated manually. “Painful but necessary,” he said.
Pressing for an explanation, Musk replied, “All verified individuals will have the same blue tick, as the boundary of what is ‘notable’ is otherwise too subjective. Individuals may have a secondary small logo showing they belong to an organization if they are verified as such by that organization.”
According to Musk, this latest change will go into effect on December 2, after being pushed back from its original November 29 deadline.
It marks a departure from the billionaire CEO’s original plan to make the blue verification cross, originally intended to stop counterfeiting, available to anyone willing to pay $8 a month for Twitter Blue, the premium -Service that allows users to edit their tweets and cancel among other properties. It seems that those who pay for Twitter Blue are now manually verified.
Experiments cause chaos
Musk quickly reversed the blue tick-for-all system after it sparked a spate of imitations.
Eli Lilly and Lockheed Martin fell victim to scammers who created fake verified profiles to tweet company announcements, sending the companies’ share prices plummeting.
In another experiment, Musk’s tested Twitter with a gray “official” tick for specific accounts that was toggled on and off multiple times. To combat the impersonation, Musk then said that any fraudulent blue check accounts that weren’t clearly labeled as “spoofed” would be permanently banned.
In addition to new verification colors, Musk is now planning to restore almost all previously suspended accounts after the decision was presented to a Twitter poll – 72% of voters said yes.
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